Voluntary Financial Disclosure and the Unlisted Securities Market: An Empirical Investigation

Lutfi, Munir Musa (1989) Voluntary Financial Disclosure and the Unlisted Securities Market: An Empirical Investigation. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

This thesis investigates the hypothesis that the Unlisted Securities Market (USM) companies disclose financial information voluntarily. Also examined are the hypotheses of the possible determinants of voluntary disclosure that have been developed from the agency theory, theories of the firm, and the informational risk theory literature. To measure voluntary financial disclosure, a disclosure index was constructed from items of information that appear or could appear, in corporate annual reports, but had not contemporaneously been specified either by the U.K. Companies Acts, the U.K. Accounting Standards Committee, or The London Stock Exchange. Using the disclosure index to compute quantitative voluntary disclosure values for the sample, the chosen hypotheses of voluntary disclosure were then tested. The cross-industry analysis of voluntary disclosure indicates that voluntary disclosure occurs for every company sampled. Also, there is substantial variation in the quantity voluntarily disclosed by the companies in the sample. The cross-industry analysis of the incentives of voluntary disclosure employs the regression statistical technique, after consulting the results of an initial statistical investigation and the literature. The results indicate that the probability of USM companies disclosing information voluntarily increases with firm's size, percentage of foreign turnover, gearing, and the existence of executive share option schemes. Also, the analysis shows that the probability of USM companies disclosing information voluntarily decreases with the percentage of directors' equity. Industrial sector, however, shows mixed results concerning the sign of the relationship. Furthermore, according to the cross-industry analysis, the probability of USM companies disclosing information voluntarily decreases with firm's profitability. Finally, the analyses do not lend support to the proposed relationships between levels of voluntary disclosure and the auditing firm, number of the nonexecutives on the Board of Directors, and the number of substantial shareholders.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Keywords: Finance
• Date of Award: 1989
• Depositing User: Enlighten Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:1989-77951
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 30 Jan 2020 15:46
• Last Modified: 30 Jan 2020 15:46
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/77951