Do voluntary disclosures of bad news improve liquidity?

Can managers improve market liquidity and lower the cost of capital by providing voluntary earnings guidance? This study examines the impact of profit warnings on market liquidity and finds that voluntary disclosure of bad news actually improves market liquidity. By conducting an empirical study over the period 1995–2010 on NYSE, NASDAQ and AMEX listed firms, we find that firms that issue profit warnings show enhanced market liquidity during the post-announcement period. We show that profit warnings reduce information asymmetry and lower bid-ask spreads and increase trading volumes. These results are invariant to daily (short run) and monthly (long run) data after controlling for firm specific attributes. The results have major corporate policy implications. By voluntarily disclosing negative earnings guidance by managers, firms will experience significant improvement in market liquidity, thereby lowering the cost of capital. Our results are even more profound for firms that release bad news with extremely negative stock market impact. In other words, voluntary disclosure of bad news is good for market liquidity.     

Corporate carbon risk,voluntary disclosure,and cost of capital: South African evidence

The study examines the interplay among corporate carbon risk, voluntary disclosure, and cost of capital within the context of South Africa, a “rising power” in the climate policy debate. We develop a system of simultaneous equations models and analyze data drawn from firms traded on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange (JSE), for the period 2010 to 2015, using the three‐stage least squares procedure. We find that voluntary carbon disclosure is associated with lower overall (and equity) cost of capital, after controlling for corporate carbon risk. We also find that firms with higher carbon risk tend to provide better quality carbon disclosure and signal the possibility of high carbon risk to avoid negative market reactions resulting from concealing carbon information. Although the capital market does not appear to incorporate individual firm's carbon risk exposure into the required cost of capital, we find that it generally requires higher returns for companies operating in carbon‐intensive sectors. These findings suggest that firms could exploit the virtues of voluntary carbon disclosure to reduce their overall (and equity) cost of capital. Our findings also imply that regulators and policymakers could point to the cost of capital reducing role of voluntary disclosure to lure firms into voluntarily providing superior quality carbon disclosures.     

The Corrosive Effect of Offshore Financial Centers on Multinational Firms’ Disclosure Strategy

Abstract

This study investigates whether U.S. multinational firms with subsidiaries located in offshore financial centers (OFCs) (i.e. offshore firms) are more likely to be opaque in their voluntary disclosure relative to U.S. multinationals without such subsidiaries (non-offshore firms). We use management earnings forecasts to capture corporate voluntary disclosure. Consistent with the opportunism view, but inconsistent with the efficiency argument, our results (including robustness checks) show that offshore firms are less likely to issue earnings forecasts, disclose forecasts less frequently, exhibit a stronger tendency to withhold bad news forecasts, and release less precise forecasts than non-offshore firms. Moreover, of the three distinct dimensions of OFCs’ institutional environment, namely, low taxation, lax regulation, and secrecy policy, each plays a role in negatively shaping firms’ disclosure strategy. Thus, OFCs’ institutional features exacerbate the opacity that plagues firms seeking to avoid taxes via their OFC subsidiaries. Our results are consistent with the notion that, beyond the scope of taxes, multinational firms’ use of OFCs has a corrosive effect on market information dynamics. Hence, OFCs have a much wider impact on the U.S. economy as well as other major economies than just tax avoidance or evasion.     

Corporate carbon risk exposure,voluntary disclosure,and financial reporting quality

The study examines whether corporate carbon risk exposure is associated with financial reporting quality and whether voluntary carbon disclosure mediates the relationship. We analyze data drawn from firms traded on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), for the period 2011 to 2015. We document robust evidence that firms with higher carbon risk exposure tend to provide financial statements of poorer quality (i.e., direct effect) and this association is partially mediated through voluntary carbon disclosure (i.e., indirect effect). The overall negative association between corporate carbon risk exposure and the firm's financial reporting quality is partly explained by the quality of voluntary carbon disclosure.     

定期报告预约披露日期的信息含量

沪深两交易所从2002年初开始对外公布上市公司向其预约的定期报告披露日期,本文研究了这一日期是否包含对投资者有用的信息。我们发现,在交易所公布预约日期时,公司的预约披露日期越早,则其异常回报越高,反之则低。市场的这种反应可以用随后公布的实际会计业绩好坏加以解释。我们还考察了市场的这种反应在横截面上的差异,对发布过”好消息”的预警公告及规模较大的公司,市场的反应程度较低;同时还发现预约披露日期的信息含量并未被”坏消息”的业绩预警公告所取代,这说明预约披露日期对“坏消息”的预警公司起到了进一步的证实作用。     

Director Ownership and Voluntary Segment Disclosure: Hong Kong Evidence

Weakness of corporate governance and lack of transparency are often considered causes of or contributors to the Asian Financial Crisis. Publicly listed companies in Hong Kong, like other Asian firms, have concentrated director ownership. The study uses voluntary segment disclosure above the benchmark minimum as a proxy for transparency and examines its relationship to the ownership structure and composition of corporate boards in Hong Kong. We find that: (1) high (concentrated) board ownership explains the extent of low voluntary segment disclosure and this negative relationship is stronger when firm performance is very poor; (2) the contribution of non‐executive directors to enhance voluntary segment disclosure is effective for firms with low director ownership but not for concentrated‐ownership firms. These results have implications for policy makers and regulators in the Asia‐Pacific region striving to improve governance and transparency.     

Private Equity Investments and Disclosure Policy

In the current study, we dynamically analyze unlisted firms' voluntary disclosure decisions around private equity (PE) participation. First, we disentangle the role of disclosure in attracting PE investments. In addition, we examine the extent to which a firm's disclosure policy is affected by the changing corporate setting and intensified corporate governance after having received PE. We find no evidence that firms would employ increased disclosure to signal their quality in the years preceding the PE financing. However, we document a significant switch to increased financial disclosure from the PE investment year onwards, consistent with the hypothesis that PE investor presence positively affects portfolio firms' disclosure decisions. Further, we show that the proportional PE ownership stake is positively related to increased disclosure, but only at very high ownership levels. We explain these results in that both internal and external information demands call for higher public disclosure in PE firms. We conclude that the changing information environment resulting from a PE investment stimulates increased public financial disclosure. Our results contribute to illustrate how an indisputable change in governance resulting from a PE investment affects inter-temporal corporate disclosure decisions in unlisted firms.     

On the Relationship between Voluntary Disclosure,Earnings Smoothing and the Value-Relevance of Earnings: The Case of Switzerland

Abstract

This paper examines whether voluntary disclosure by Swiss firms constrains the use of discretionary accruals to smooth earnings, and explores the effect of voluntary disclosure on the value relevance of earnings. We focus on Swiss firms because Switzerland's financial reporting system provides managers with extensive discretion in corporate disclosure, and there are important variations in the level of information provided in their annual reports. We consider that managers can choose two different ways to voluntarily convey information, either through the quality and quantity of annual report disclosure or, through compliance with International Accounting Standards (IAS)/International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) or US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). Relying on a simultaneous equations approach, our results suggest that Swiss firms use discretionary accruals to smooth earnings. However, this relation is reduced for firms that voluntarily disclose more information in their annual report or comply with IAS/IFRS or US GAAP. Moreover, we show that discretionary accruals of high disclosers or of firms voluntarily complying with IAS/IFRS or US GAAP receive a lower valuation weight.     

The Effects of Conservative Reporting on Investor Disagreement

We examine whether the level of a firm's conditional conservatism affects investor disagreement around earnings announcement dates. Investor disagreement is relevant for its repercussions on stock market efficiency. However, the literature related to the effect of firms’ reporting policies on disagreement is scant. Prior research suggests that conservatism, by requiring higher verifiability of profits, constrains earnings overstatements and encourages more complete revelations of losses, thus improving the information environment. In this paper, we further hypothesize that these effects of conservatism enhance news credibility and decrease information asymmetry, particularly for bad news announcements. This results in a lower disagreement and improved interpretation of earnings news. We consistently find that conservatism measures are negatively associated with proxies of announcement-time investor disagreement and that this effect is stronger when the firm is reporting bad news. Additional analyses indicate that the impact of conservatism is stronger when market surprise to the announcement is greater, while it is weaker in the presence of frequent and precise voluntary disclosure that preempts the earnings announcement. Finally, we show that a higher percentage of institutional investors’ ownership and a higher level of commitment to conservatism reinforce the impact of the latter.     

诉讼风险如何影响事务所低价揽客经济后果?——来自公司盈余管理的经验证据

近年来,会计师事务所低价揽客行为频发，其经济后果受到广泛关注。在此背景下，基于诉讼风险视角，实证检验事务所低价揽客行为对企业盈余管理的影响。研究发现，存在低价揽客行为的事务所审计的客户公司有着更高程度的盈余管理，但这种关系主要由非十大所的低价揽客行为所驱动；当诉讼风险增加时，事务所低价揽客与公司盈余管理之间的正向关系有所减弱，诉讼风险的这种调节作用主要存在于非十大所审计的企业以及进行正向盈余管理的企业中。这些结果表明，与大所相比，小所的低价揽客行为在加剧企业盈余管理方面产生的经济后果更为严重，而较高的诉讼风险可缓解这一行为带来的不良后果。因此，抑制企业盈余管理，应有针对性地规范小所的审计定价行为，加大其低价揽客行为的诉讼成本。     

Corporate Governance Berichterstattung als Instrument wertorientierter Unternehmensführung: Empirische Erkenntnisse für den deutschen Kapitalmarkt

This paper tests a simultaneous equation system on the relationship between corporate governance disclosure and firm performance for 113 German listed firms underlying the highest standards of transparency & disclosure of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and receiving strongest analyst coverage. Capturing both mechanisms endogeneity and reverse causation, we provide evidence that there is a significantly positive relationship between voluntary corporate governance disclosure and market-to-book value and total shareholder return. Against theoretical assumptions, we couldn’t find evidence for reverse causation between firm performance and corporate governance disclosure. Surprisingly, we could not longer find evidence on a positive impact of declared compliance with the German Code of Corporate Governance on firm performance.     

Voluntary Disclosure and Analyst Forecast

Empiricists document that firms more often voluntarily disclose bad news than good news and link this pessimism to managers’ increased incentives not to fall short of earnings expectations. This paper analyzes the voluntary disclosure of a manager’s private information by explicitly considering her incentives to meet or beat an analyst’s earnings forecast. The model predicts that managers who face strong incentives to meet or beat these forecasts more frequently disclose bad news than good news in order to guide analysts’ expectations about future earnings downward. This pessimism is higher in markets with less informed managers and may hold even if the manager has strong incentives for high stock prices and meet-or-beat incentives are comparably low.     

业绩预告下的股份减持与内幕交易——会计稳健性是遏制还是助力？

选取2010—2018年沪深A股上市公司为样本,考察业绩预告发布前后大股东是否存在以及如何利用自身信息优势进行股份减持交易,会计稳健性是否以及如何对该内幕交易产生影响。研究结果表明:与强制性业绩预告相比,自愿性业绩预告披露前后发生大股东减持的概率更高,并且会计稳健性会显著抑制自愿性业绩预告披露前后的大股东减持行为。进一步将业绩预告消息区分为好消息和坏消息之后研究发现:坏消息的利空程度越高,大股东在业绩预告之前进行股份减持的规模越大;或者好消息的利好程度越高,大股东在业绩预告之后减持的规模也越大;稳健的财务信息能够抑制公司在隐匿坏消息方面进行的内幕交易,但会加剧公司在隐匿好消息方面进行的内幕交易。     

Do Board's Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy and Orientation Influence Environmental Sustainability Disclosure? UK Evidence

The environmental implications of corporate economic activities have led to growing demands for firms and their boards to adopt sustainable strategies and to disseminate more useful information about their activities and impacts on environment. This paper investigates the impact of board's corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy and orientation on the quantity and quality of environmental sustainability disclosure in UK listed firms. We find that effective board CSR strategy and CSR‐oriented directors have a positive and significant impact on the quality of environmental sustainability disclosure, but not on the quantity. Our findings also suggest that the existence of a CSR committee and issuance of a stand‐alone CSR report are positively and significantly related to environmental sustainability disclosure. When we distinguish between firms with high and low environmental risk, we find that the board CSR/sustainability practices that affect the quantity (quality) of environmental sustainability disclosure appear to be driven more by highly (lowly) environmentally sensitive firms. These results suggest that the board CSR/sustainability practices play an important role in ensuring a firm's legitimacy and accountability towards stakeholders. Our findings shed new light on this under‐researched area and could be of interest to companies, policy‐makers and other stakeholders. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Risk reporting and stock return in the UK: Does market competition Matter?

This study examines the extent to which market competition influences risk reporting practice. It also explores how market competition affects the usefulness of risk reporting. The automated textual analysis measures the level of risk reporting [how much to report] and its tone [how it is reported] of UK FTSE 350 firms. The abnormal stock return is used as a proxy for the usefulness of risk reporting. In contrast to the proprietary cost hypothesis, our results indicate that the level of risk reporting is a positive function of market competition. Besides, UK firms are likely to disseminate more (less) negative (positive) news about their risks when market competition increases. However, after examining the informativeness of this reporting, we provide evidence that the level of reported risk information does not significantly enhance the abnormal stock returns of UK firms. Nevertheless, the tone of the reported risks carries incremental information indicative of a firm’s abnormal stock return, especially when market competition decreases. The findings suggest that firms are likely to alleviate their proprietary costs by framing their reporting of risk information in a way that deters potential competitors from entering their market and that market competition diminishes the perceived informativeness of such reporting. The results provide implications for investors as they should not acknowledge the disclosure of higher risk information when asking for more corporate transparency, as it lacks informativeness. Besides, policymakers may impose extra compulsory requirements on the UK firms to avoid reporting overly optimistic risk news to protect investors and avoid the adverse effects of this reporting.     

Timeliness of Annual Report Releases and Market Reaction to Earnings Announcements in an Emerging Capital Market: The Case of China

This paper examines the relation between firm performance and the timing of annual report releases in an emerging capital market. Based on the population of listed Chinese firms with A-shares for 1994-1997, we find that good news firms release their annual reports earlier than bad news firms, and loss firms release their annual reports the latest. Moreover, consistent with Chambers and Penman (1984) and Begley and Fischer (1998), these firms unexpectedly accelerate the release of good news and delay the disclosure of bad news relative to their previous reporting pattern. We also observe a significant price reaction to the annual earnings announcements for both early (good news) and late (bad news) reporting firms. Similar results are found for those A-share firms which have also issued B- or H-shares to foreign investors. Our study documents a systematic timing pattern of annual report disclosures, which is useful for investors to predict future earnings, especially in anticipating bad news in China's emerging market where information about future earnings is very limited.     

Beyond symbolic and substantive: Strategic disclosure of corporate environmental information in China

Under increasing regulatory pressure to disclose environmental impacts, corporate environmental information disclosure (EID) is becoming more prevalent. However, the motives for EID and disclosure approaches (i.e., symbolic or substantive) remain controversial. Using a sample of data for 742 listed manufacturing firms in China across 3 years, we provide evidence to show that the level of EID is significantly positively associated with a firm's advertising intensity and that firms in moderately competitive industries have a higher propensity for adopting an EID‐based differentiated strategy than firms in stronger or weaker competitive industries. We also find that firms that are more sensitive to environmental issues strategically understate their environmental impact when directly facing consumers. Our results suggest that the implementation of corporate EID is strategic and that firms have strong market motives, even under regulatory pressure to demonstrate legitimacy. We discuss this study's contributions to research on EID theory and implications for strategic EID management.     

Managers’ use of language in corrupt firms’ financial disclosures: Evidence from FCPA violators

This paper explores management’s use of language in financial disclosures of corrupt firms by looking at a sample of firms that have been prosecuted for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). We find that the management of FCPA violators use more negative, less litigious, more complex and less conservative language when disclosing financials than non‐violators. The language effect prior to an FCPA prosecution is driven by firms with low corporate governance performance. By contrast, firms with high corporate governance use less complex and more conservative language before an FCPA prosecution than firms with low corporate governance performance. Furthermore, we find that after an FCPA prosecution the language becomes less litigious and complex than before the FCPA litigation.     

Factors influencing the quality of corporate environmental disclosure

Many firms choose to communicate their environmental strategies through voluntary environmental disclosures. This paper examines patterns in the quality of voluntary environmental disclosures made by a sample of around 450 large UK companies drawn from a diverse range of industrial sectors. The analysis distinguishes between five facets of quality, including the disclosure of group‐wide environmental policies, environmental impact targets and an environmental audit. We examine how the decisions firms face regarding each facet of quality are determined by firm and industry characteristics, and find the quality of disclosure to be determined by a firm's size and the nature of its business activities. Specifically, we find high quality disclosure to be primarily associated with larger firms and those in sectors most closely related to environmental concerns. In contrast to several recent contributions, we find that the media exposure of companies plays no role in stimulating voluntary disclosures. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

The relationship between environmental information disclosure and firm valuation: the role of corporate governance

Hopwood argued that accounting has become associated with environmental concerns, and that environmental concerns will be further integrated into accounting practices in the near future. The McKinsey Company discovered that environmental information affects a firm’s value, and that investors in firms with good corporate governance in Asian countries are willing to pay a price premium of 20 % or greater. The increasing need for environmental protection and responsibility to the community on the part of firms have led to environmental protection becoming a critical focal concern of governments, public welfare associations, and the public. Effective implementation of corporate governance has been reported to enhance operating performance and increase firm value. This study applies the Ohlson valuation model to examine the value relevance of environmental information disclosure and corporate governance, and investigate their on firms in Taiwan. The results indicate relationships between total disclosure of environmental information, mandatory disclosure of environmental information, and voluntary disclosure of environmental information and firm value. Corporate governance is positively correlated with the valuation of total disclosure of environmental information and mandatory disclosure of environmental information.