Kazbi Soonawalla

Decline in Financial Reporting for Joint Ventures? Canadian Evidence on Removal of Financial Reporting Choice

In 1995, the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (CICA) changed its Generally Accepted Accounting Principles on accounting for joint ventures from permitting a choice between the equity method (EM) and proportionate consolidation (PC) to requiring only PC. More recently, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) has decided to issue a new standard that will eliminate choice between EM and PC and require only EM; but as of October 2010 a new standard was still to be issued. The past Canadian and proposed IASB changes are similar in that choice between the same two reporting methods is removed but differ in the required alternative, PC for Canada and EM for the IASB. In this paper we use a sample of Canadian companies over the period 1985–2003 to study financial reporting for joint ventures. To our knowledge, our Canadian sample is the only one reflecting a reduction of choice in financial reporting methods for joint ventures. Therefore, our results have particular relevance for evaluating the IASBs proposed change. Specifically, we investigate whether firms that use EM between 1985 and 1994 experience a decline in value relevance of key balance sheet amounts such as total assets and liabilities when forced to use PC from 1995 onwards. Since 1995 firms are also required to provide footnote disclosures on their share of joint venture assets and liabilities in addition to revenues, expenses and cash flows. Using these disclosures, we investigate whether disaggregate joint venture assets and liabilities are incrementally and overall value relevant. We find that firms that are forced to switch from EM to PC experience a decline in value relevance of reported assets and liabilities. The firms that use PC for the entire sample period experience no such decline. We also find that joint venture assets and liabilities are incrementally and overall value relevant when disclosures are mandatory from 1995 onwards. Our results show that the removal of choice of financial reporting method does have value-relevance implications, something that is of importance to users. We also find that the requirement of additional disclosure of joint venture assets and liabilities is value relevant, which may offset, to some extent, the costs of the reduction in choice. Our inferences may have implications for a number of jurisdictions across Europe and beyond that are affected by a similar reduction of accounting choice proposed by the IASB.

Determinants and Valuation Implications of Compulsory Stock Option Disclosures in a Weak Regulatory Setting—The Case of France

Using a sample of listed French firms in 2005, the year of mandatory IFRS adoption in the European Union (EU), we investigate the determinants of disclosure compliance of stock option expenses under IFRS 2, Share-based Payment. Stock options are a popular means of executive compensation in France relative to other EU countries. Prior to 2005, French accounting standards and corporate governance regulations did not require recognition of option expense amounts and required minimal supplementary disclosures. There was also a perception that enforcement was imperfect, in particular with respect to IFRS 2. Given this setting, we explore what factors influence the willingness of firms to follow compulsory IFRS requirements in a weak regulatory setting. We find that overall compliance with IFRS 2 disclosure requirements increases with U.S. and U.K. institutional ownership, U.S. cross-listing, provision of English language statements, and decreases with CEO and family ownership of the firm. We also investigate how stock market prices are affected by the recognition and disclosure of stock option expenses according to IFRS 2 in this regulatory setting and find that investors value option expenses positively, particularly when accompanied by high-disclosure compliance. Our findings have implications for other jurisdictions in the process of adopting or converging to IFRS.

Debt Specialization and Information Opaqueness

In this study, we suggest that level of information opaqueness determines the propensity of publicly listed firms to have debt financing from only a few debt types (i.e., debt specialization). Using accruals quality as a proxy for information opaqueness, we find that the degree of debt specialization is lower for firms with high-quality accruals. This result is consistent with the notion that information collection and monitoring costs are higher for firms that have higher informational opacity, explaining the tendency toward debt specialization. We further argue that the demand for monitoring by creditors is lower for firms with intensified institutional monitoring. The empirical findings show that firms with more concentrated institutional owners are more likely to be less specialized by debt type and that debt specialization is less sensitive to accruals quality in such firms. Using earnings timeliness and readability of annual reports as alternative proxies for information quality, we confirm the higher propensity to concentrate debt claims by type. We further examine how debt specialization changes following the arrival of bad news and find that the debt structure is more sensitive to accruals quality following the issuance of SEC letters regarding reporting deficiencies.

The pooling of interests to end the pooling method in IFRS

The pooling method of accounting for business combinations was banned in the USA in 2001 and by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) in 2004. Although the US ban was controversial, the IASB ban received much less opposition. We review comment letters to the IASB and discuss possible reasons for this disparity. Understanding why reactions to similar proposals can be so different is increasingly important as efforts to converge US generally accepted accounting principles and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) gather pace. Our paper investigates the consultative stage for IFRS 3, exploring various aspects of the proposed standard, including elimination of pooling, non-amortisation of goodwill and consideration of fresh start. While the earlier US process possibly contributed to the lack of controversy around the IASB proposals, we suggest that other factors also played an important part. This study contributes to our understanding of factors that shape accounting reforms.