apostolou and nanopoulos - 2009 - voluntary accounting disclosure and cg - evidence from greek listed firms

Voluntary accounting disclosure and corporate governance: evidence from Greek listed firms Apostolos K.. Nanopoulos Department of Public Administration Panteion University 136 Sygrou

Int J Accounting and Finance, Vol 1, No 4, 2009 395

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Voluntary accounting disclosure and corporate governance: evidence from Greek listed firms

Apostolos K Apostolou*

and Konstantinos A Nanopoulos Department of Public Administration

Panteion University

136 Sygrou Ave., Athens 17671, Greece E-mail: apos@panteion.gr

E-mail: nanopak@taxexperts.gr

*Corresponding author

Abstract: A hypothesis on financial accounting disclosure practices has been

established in prior literature The hypothesis was that financial accounting disclosure practices are not arbitrary, but are influenced by company characteristics and corporate governance In order to examine the validity

of this hypothesis, two disclosure indexes were built using as sample the published Annual Reports for 2004 of all the listed manufacturing and construction companies in the Athens Stock Exchange (ASE) The first index contains items which are mandatory according to Greek General Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP); and the second index contains items which are mandatory according to a number of selected International Accounting Standards (IASs) but which were voluntary at the time that the research was conducted The study used a cross-section model, in which each type of disclosure index was regressed on proxy-related variables with corporate governance and voluntary disclosure in order to detect the existence of a statistically significant relationship The major finding of this research is that there is a significant extent of noncompliance in respect of IASs and the disclosures of Greek regulations The key factors associated with the levels of compliance with IASs include the composition of the Board of Directors, profitability and the number of common shares The public firms in the sample have shown that because of the political cost, the management is forced to disclose accounting data and support transparency

Keywords: accounting standardisation; financial reporting; voluntary

disclosure; corporate governance; IFRS; financial accounting; Greece

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Apostolou, A.K and

Nanopoulos, K.A (2009) ‘Voluntary accounting disclosure and corporate

governance: evidence from Greek listed firms’, Int J Accounting and Finance,

Vol 1, No 4, pp.395–414

Biographical notes: Apostolos K Apostolou is an Associate Professor of

Accounting at the Department of Public Administration (Section of Taxation and Auditing), Panteion University, Athens, Greece He graduated from the University of Piraeus (BA in Business Administration), and he holds a PhD in Accounting from the Department of Economics at the University of Athens

He has professional experience as an Auditor in The Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Greece, and as Consultant in the Greek Capital Market Commission He is the author of many academic and professional articles