The effects of accounting restatements on firm growth

Do restatements result in lower firm growth? One argument in support of this contention is that accounting restatements hurt contracting relations between the firm and outside parties such as a firm’s customers and suppliers, negatively impacting firm cash flows. The negative impact on cash flow reduces the level of internal cash holdings available for investment. Another argument is that restatements dampen firm growth by increasing the firm’s cost of external financing. We empirically evaluate these arguments by using the standard sales growth based financial planning model. In carrying out our analysis, we distinguish the effects of restatement on overall firm growth as well as its components of internally and externally financed growth. Our findings suggest that overall firm growth rates decline following a restatement. Furthermore, we find that accounting restatements have a greater adverse impact on externally financed growth rates. We also find that not all restatements yield identical effects: the impact of restatements is more pronounced for the subsample of firms identified to have undertaken the more egregious fraudulent reporting than the subsample of firms that reported restatements to correct previous accounting errors. We also find that firms with severe restatements, measured based on announcement period market reactions, have lower externally financed growth. Overall, our evidence highlights the adverse impact of restatement on firm growth, particularly through external financing.     

Domestic Practice, Comparative International Analyses and Accounting Discretion—Italian Savings Banks' Pension Cost Accounting

In countries where the use of financial statements is minimal and relative accounting debate less intense, domestic practices may gain benefit from being consistently applied. Comparison with foreign experience is crucial. It leads to questioning of the appropriateness of practices that might otherwise never be discussed, particularly where they are developed in such a way as to favour the stakeholders controlling the accounting process. A salient example evidencing the above claims is to be found in the Italian savings banks (hereafter 'banks') accounting for the cost of defined benefits pension plans. The Italian financial system is credit-based. While banks play a predominant role, the financial industry itself enjoys significant autonomy in setting its accounting standards. This is especially so in respect of the accounting for the cost of pensions as savings banks have offered the most significant and almost unique example of employees' defined benefit pension plans in Italy.
  The present article compares some aspects of the long debated international and Anglo-Saxon standards' recommendations with the infrequently questioned Italian domestic practice. The substantial deviations that emerge in the Italian system favour particularly management and proprietorship by allowing a significant degree of discretion regarding the labour cost figure, thereby enhancing the banks' salary bargaining strength.     

IT internal control weaknesses and firm performance: An organizational liability lens

The information systems literature and the public press have called for organizations to more closely scrutinize their information technology (IT) controls; however, little more than anecdotal evidence exists on the business value of quality IT internal control, beyond regulatory compliance. In this paper, we (a) advance an organizational liability perspective to the question of IT internal control value; and (b) use the unique setting provided by the enactment of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) to investigate the relationship between IT internal control weaknesses (ICWs) and both accounting earnings (a contemporaneous measure of firm performance) and market value (a forward looking, risk-adjusted measure of firm performance). Using a data set that provides audited annual assessments of the effectiveness of both IT and non-IT internal controls for a cross-section of companies as mandated by SOX, we find that firms that report an IT ICW have lower accounting earnings compared to firms with strong IT internal controls. We also find that IT ICW moderates the association between accounting earnings and market valuation, with firms reporting weak IT internal controls having a lower earnings multiple. These results are sustained even after controlling for non-IT ICWs and firm-specific factors that are known determinants of ICWs, and are reinforced using an inter-temporal changes analysis in which we use each firm as its own control at a different point in time. Overall, our results provide empirical evidence which suggests that IT internal controls are a strategic necessity and that information systems risk is priced by the capital markets. The implications of these findings for theory and practice are discussed.     

Bolstering family control: Evidence from loyalty shares

We study the introduction of a new control-enhancing mechanism in Italy, a country still characterized by family-controlled firms but with an increasing importance of institutional investors. Since 2014, Italian firms have been able to adopt loyalty shares, which allow a double voting right if shares are continuously held for at least two years. We find that about 20% of listed firms have introduced loyalty shares, and family-controlled firms are the most likely adopters. Loyalty shares neither anticipate acquisitions, nor equity issues by the adopting firm. Instead, they allow controlling shareholders to reduce their equity stake without losing control. We report no evidence of an adverse wealth effect both at the adoption and in the years following it. As expected, institutional investors vote against the introduction of loyalty shares. Yet, they do not reduce their holdings afterwards, as incremental governance costs are outweighed by the superior performance of adopting firms. Overall, our evidence suggests that bolstering family control is the main effect of the introduction of loyalty shares.     

Effective board monitoring over earnings reports and forecasts: Evidence from CFO outside director appointments

Prior evidence that firms adjust their board structure following accounting restatements suggests that firms expect the board to effectively monitor the firm’s financial accounting system. However, little is known about signals firms use to identify monitoring weaknesses or the types of individuals firms appoint to improve the quality of monitoring. We expand on Ghannam, Bujega, Matolcsy, and Spiropolous (2019)’s evidence that firms appoint directors with accounting experience after financial fraud by investigating whether firms that file restatements or issue highly inaccurate earnings forecasts appoint individuals with CFO experience (i.e., a subset of accounting experts) to their audit committee. We find that firms are more likely to appoint an outside director with CFO experience to the audit committee when they have recently restated earnings and when they have higher prior management forecast error. We also find that the appointment of a CFO outside director to the audit committee is followed by a lower likelihood of restatement and more accurate management forecast. Together, our results suggest that firms respond to accounting failures by appointing outside directors with CFO experience. Thus, we provide insight into the signals firms use to identify weaknesses in the monitoring of the accounting function and the types of expertise firms value in addressing those weaknesses.     

Types of investor uncertainty and the cost of equity capital

We jointly test the effects of two types of investor uncertainty, one related to future firm performance and unrelated to accruals (cash flow uncertainty) and one directly related to accrual estimation errors (accounting quality uncertainty). Distinct from prior studies, our uncertainty estimates are based on a matched‐firm design that minimizes the mechanical relationship between the two uncertainty variables. We find a strong negative relationship between cash flow uncertainty and multiple estimates of the cost of equity capital. With respect to accounting quality uncertainty, we find a strong positive association with both expected stock returns and implied costs of equity, but only in settings that control for cash flow uncertainty. Collectively, our results suggest the need to consider different types of investor uncertainty when examining how investor uncertainty affects the cost of equity capital.     

Mandatory IFRS adoption and the cost of debt in Italy and UK

This paper analyses the effect of the mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) within the EU on the cost of corporate debt. In order to avoid the imprecision involved in a large-scale cross-country study, we examine the impact of IFRS in two very clearly different institutional settings, the UK and Italy. The UK is a common-law country characterised by strong enforcement and national generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) which are equivalent to IFRS. Italy is a typical European code-law country, characterised by a weak outside investor protection system, and national GAAP significantly different from the IFRS model. No IFRS effect is observed in the UK, consistent with it having standards which are close to IFRS. During the post-IFRS period, in Italy more weight is placed on the accounting numbers to assess the cost of debt. We also find that accruals quality improves in Italy, thus suggesting that public financial reporting data are enhanced relative to privately held information about borrowers' credit ratings.     

The Age of the Dragon: The Effect of Imports from China on Firm‐Level Prices

We analyze the impact of increased import penetration from China on the dynamics of firm‐level output prices in Italy. Accounting for potential endogeneity biases we find a significant and negative causal relationship: a 0.1 percentage point higher Chinese import penetration restrains price growth by 0.17 percentage points per year. This relationship reflects a procompetitive effect induced by cheaper imports, and, thanks to the firm‐level dimension of our data, we show that it is driven by low‐productivity firms within less skill‐intensive sectors. Finally, we show that Chinese import competition also had a dampening effect on Italian overall inflation.     

Tax Deferral and Mutual Fund Inflows: Evidence from a Quasi‐Natural Experiment

We propose a new method to identify the impact of a change in the tax burden on mutual fund inflows. We use quasi‐experimental data from Italy where, starting from July 2011, the tax regime for domestic mutual funds was changed from an accruals basis to a realisation basis, while the taxation of foreign funds remained on a realisation basis. We find that the reform has had a positive effect on net inflows of Italian funds (the treated group) with respect to foreign funds (the control group). The effect is both economically and statistically significant. Moreover, there is no evidence that the increase in the demand for Italian funds came at the expense of foreign funds.     

Accounting Practices and the Market Valuation of Accounting Numbers: Evidence from Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Thailand

This study examines the relation between stock prices and accounting earnings and book values in six Asian countries: Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Thailand. The analysis is based on a residual earnings model that expresses the value of the firm in terms of book value and residual income. The model holds for any clean surplus accounting system. However, for finite time horizons, biased accounting may affect model estimates. The six countries examined in this study differ in faithfulness to clean surplus accounting as well as bias (conservatism). The study addresses two questions. First, are there systematic differences across countries in the value relevance of accounting, and are these differences related to accounting differences? Second, are there systematic differences in the incremental and relative information content of book value per share (BVPS) and abnormal (residual) earnings per share (REPS) across the countries, and are such differences related to accounting differences? We find differences across the six countries in the explanatory power of BVPS and REPS for firm values. Explanatory power for Taiwan and Malaysia is relatively low while that for Korea and the Philippines is relatively high. These differences are generally consistent with differences in accounting practice; however, since Korean accounting practice is strongly influenced by tax law, we did not expect the high association for Korea. Second, with respect to the incremental and relative explanatory power of BVPS and REPS, we find BVPS to have high explanatory power in the Philippines and Korea but little in Taiwan. In all six countries REPS has less explanatory power than BVPS in most years. Again, the evidence may be interpreted as suggesting accounting practice affects valuation (with Korea again as the exception). Finally, we provide evidence on the sensitivity of the timing of comparisons of stock prices and accounting values. We find that comparing prices at year-end (even though annual accounting information has not been released at that time), in general, provides the highest correlation between market and accounting numbers.     

Assessing the Information Content of Mark-to-Market Accounting with Mixed Attributes: The Case of Cash Flow Hedges

We examine how outsiders rationally interpret a reported loss on derivatives when the application of mark‐to‐market accounting to cash flow hedges creates a mixed attribute problem. We find that because of the mixed attribute problem, the information content of mark‐to‐market accounting is related to the information content of historical cost accounting in a very specific way. This relationship allows us to identify the circumstances under which mark‐to‐market accounting facilitates and when it detracts from the objective of providing an early warning of potential financial distress. We show that the reporting of an impending derivative loss by a distressed firm can actually lead outsiders to infer that the firm is in a better financial position than what they would have inferred under the silence associated with historical cost accounting. Without the mixed attribute problem, mark‐to‐market accounting would always yield more accurate assessments of the firm's financial position.     

Firm characteristics and selection of international accounting software

We report the results of a survey of international U.S. companies focused on the selection of international accounting software. We investigate the relationships among firm characteristics (size and degree of internationalization), international features of accounting software (multicurrency, multireporting, and multilingual), and general selection criteria (support and security, hardware and operating platforms, and flexibility and cost). We find that firms’ reported preferences for international features differ depending on size and degree of internationalization. However, the relationship between firm characteristics and general selection criteria is not significant. The implication from our results is that firm characteristics should be an important consideration in the selection and design of international accounting software.     

Accounting restatements and information risk

We examine the association between accounting restatements and the pricing of information risk. Using the Fama and French three-factor model augmented with discretionary and innate information risk factors, we find a significant increase in the factor loadings on the discretionary information risk factor for restatement firms after a restatement announcement. The increase in factor loadings results in an increase in the estimated cost of capital, which is cross-sectionally associated with the short-window price reaction to restatements. We study several potential determinants of the change in information risk pricing and find evidence consistent with the restatement initiator (auditor vs. firm management) and the number of times a firm restates affecting the change in the pricing of discretionary information risk. We also find an increase, of smaller magnitude, in the pricing of discretionary information risk for non-restatement firms in the same industries as the restatement firms, consistent with an information transfer effect.     

Regulation fair disclosure and the cost of equity capital

We examine the effect of Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg FD) on the cost of equity capital. We find some evidence that (1) the cost of capital declines in the post-Reg FD period relative to the pre-Reg FD period, on average, for a broad cross-section of US firms, (2) the decrease in the cost of capital post Reg FD is mainly for medium and large firms but is insignificant for small firms, and (3) the decrease in the cost of capital post Reg FD is systematically related to firm characteristics indicative of selective disclosure before Reg FD. In contrast, we find little evidence of a decrease in the cost of capital for American Depositary Receipts and US-listed foreign firms, which are legally exempt from Reg FD. Overall, our findings do not support a conclusion in recent studies that the cost of capital has increased post Reg FD and, if anything, suggest the opposite.     

Reporting accountant appointments and accounting restatements: Evidence from UK private companies

In recent years, regulators have exempted an increasing number of companies from the requirement to appoint auditors, yet little is known about the role of the accounting profession in preparing and validating the financial statements of unaudited companies. In this paper, we examine empirically the factors associated with the appointment of reporting accountants. We then provide novel evidence on whether unaudited UK small private companies are less likely to restate their annual accounts when they have been prepared by an external accountancy firm (i.e., a reporting accountant). Based on a cross sectional analysis of a large sample of small private unaudited UK companies, we find that, in accordance with the ‘confirmation hypothesis’, larger companies that voluntarily disclose more financial information are more likely to appoint a reporting accountant. We also find that the accounts of companies with a reporting accountant are significantly less likely to be restated than those without. This result is more pronounced for companies disclosing more financial information and for those employing a larger accounting firm. Given the dwindling number of private companies opting for audits, our findings contribute to debates on the role of the accounting profession in enhancing private company financial reporting quality.     

Accounting comparability and relative performance evaluation in CEO compensation

We investigate whether accounting comparability is associated with the likelihood that CEO compensation is tied to relative accounting performance (e.g., return on assets). We predict that higher accounting comparability increases the risk-sharing benefit of accounting-based RPE because peer firm performance better controls for common risk in RPE firm performance. Thus, firms that have higher accounting comparability with potential performance peers will be more likely to include accounting-based RPE as a component of the total CEO compensation contract. We find support for this prediction using (1) an explicit test design that relies on the ex ante terms of CEO compensation contracts obtained from proxy disclosures, and (2) an implicit design that relies on the actual realizations of CEO compensation. To provide further evidence, we examine the association between accounting comparability and the selection of performance peers when the CEO compensation contract includes an accounting-based RPE component. We find that higher comparability between the RPE firm and a potential peer firm increases (decreases) the potential peer firm’s likelihood of being selected into (dropped from) the peer group. Cross-sectional analyses show that this association is less pronounced, or not present, when the relative performance measure is price-based (as opposed to accounting-based), indicating that these results do not merely reflect a more general role of comparability in all RPE contracts.     

Firm efficiency and stock returns: Australian evidence

We employ a stochastic frontier approach to estimate firm efficiency - the efficiency with which a firm converts its inputs into output. We find a negative relation between firm efficiency and the cross-section of stock returns (‘firm efficiency effect’) in the Australian stock market. The firm efficiency effect is robust after controlling for other firm characteristics and is more pronounced in stocks with high limits-to-arbitrage. However, we find no evidence that firm efficiency is a priced factor in the cross-section. Our findings suggest that investors misprice firm efficiency and arbitrage costs perpetuate its return predictability.     

The influence of financial and legal institutions on firm size

Theory does not predict an unambiguous relationship between a country’s financial and legal institutions and firm size. Using data on the largest industrial firms for 44 countries, we find that firm size is positively related to financial intermediary development, the efficiency of the legal system and property rights protection. We do not find any evidence that firms are larger in order to internalize the functions of the banking system or to compensate for the general inefficiency of the legal system.     

Evolving Connections Between Tax and Financial Reporting in Italy

We analyze the evolution of the relationship between tax and financial reporting in Italy after the mandatory introduction of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in 2005. Italy represents an interesting case study among European countries, with domestic generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) oriented towards creditor protection and characterized by a close connection of financial and tax accounting. Unusually, the adoption of IFRS is compulsory for the unconsolidated financial statements of listed companies, but the process of alignment of domestic GAAP to IFRS, that has affected some countries, has had little effect on Italy. Thus, two accounting systems, IFRS and Italian GAAP, are used for the preparation of unconsolidated financial statements by different categories of companies and, as a consequence, two different linkages between tax and financial reporting emerge. In order to assess the degree and the direction of the book-tax linkages we use the methodology developed by Lamb, Nobes and Roberts (1998. International variations in the connections between tax and financial reporting, Accounting and Business Research, 28(3), pp. 173–188). IFRS and tax reporting show a high degree of disconnection, while Italian GAAP, in line with the accounting tradition of most continental European countries, are closely related to tax rules. The analysis points out a rapidly evolving situation, with links between accounting systems and taxation becoming tighter, mainly because of the changes in tax law introduced during the last few years.     

Information asymmetry,information dissemination and the effect of regulation FD on the cost of capital

This paper considers the impact of Regulation Fair Disclosure (FD) on firms’ information environments and costs of capital. For NYSE/Amex firms we find little evidence of a change in the cost of capital attributable to Regulation FD. For Nasdaq firms we find that Regulation FD increased firms’ costs of capital by 10–19 basis points per annum though the statistical significance of this change is modest for some of our models. We also show substantial cross-sectional variation in the cost of capital changes. We find that cost of capital changes were negatively related to both pre-regulation firm size and PIN. In addition to the findings regarding Regulation FD, this research contributes to a growing literature that documents links between firms’ information environments and their costs of capital.