IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/acctfi/v59y2019i1p87-113.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Keeping it private: financial reporting by large proprietary companies in Australia

Author

Listed:
  • Brad Potter
  • Matthew Pinnuck
  • George Tanewski
  • Sue Wright

Abstract

Since 2010, proprietary companies have had a choice of preparing three types of financial reports that vary in scope. We find that between 2010 and 2015, most proprietary companies in our random sample chose the lowest scope option, with very low quality financial reports. Few adopted the new option provided by AASB 1053 Application of Tiers of Australian Accounting Standards. The characteristics of the firms that adopted each type of report are consistent with the regulator's intention. Our findings should provide a better understanding of how accounting standards impact practice, and should assist regulators to reform private company financial reporting.

Suggested Citation

  • Brad Potter & Matthew Pinnuck & George Tanewski & Sue Wright, 2019. "Keeping it private: financial reporting by large proprietary companies in Australia," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 59(1), pages 87-113, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:acctfi:v:59:y:2019:i:1:p:87-113
    DOI: 10.1111/acfi.12436
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/acfi.12436
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/acfi.12436?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael Minnis, 2011. "The Value of Financial Statement Verification in Debt Financing: Evidence from Private U.S. Firms," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(2), pages 457-506, May.
    2. Michael Minnis & Nemit Shroff, 2017. "Why regulate private firm disclosure and auditing?," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(5), pages 473-502, July.
    3. Jerold L. Zimmerman, 2015. "The role of accounting in the twenty-first century firm," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(4), pages 485-509, June.
    4. Nobes, Christopher & Stadler, Christian, 2013. "How arbitrary are international accounting classifications? Lessons from centuries of classifying in many disciplines, and experiments with IFRS data," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 38(8), pages 573-595.
    5. Helen ANDERSON, 2014. "Pressing the right buttons: Australian case studies in the protection of employee entitlements against corporate insolvency," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 153(1), pages 117-142, March.
    6. Mary E. Barth & Wayne R. Landsman & Mark H. Lang, 2008. "International Accounting Standards and Accounting Quality," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(3), pages 467-498, June.
    7. Naomi Soderstrom & Kevin Jialin Sun, 2007. "IFRS Adoption and Accounting Quality: A Review," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(4), pages 675-702.
    8. Erlend Kvaal & Christopher Nobes, 2010. "International differences in IFRS policy choice: A research note," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(2), pages 173-187.
    9. Wouter Van Overfelt & Marc Deloof & Ann Vanstraelen, 2010. "Determinants of Corporate Financial Disclosure in an Unregulated Environment: Evidence from the Early 20th Century," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(1), pages 7-34.
    10. Ball, Ray & Shivakumar, Lakshmanan, 2008. "Earnings quality at initial public offerings," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(2-3), pages 324-349, August.
    11. Ole-Kristian Hope & Dushyantkumar Vyas, 2017. "Private company finance and financial reporting," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(5), pages 506-537, July.
    12. Christian Leuz & Peter D. Wysocki, 2016. "The Economics of Disclosure and Financial Reporting Regulation: Evidence and Suggestions for Future Research," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(2), pages 525-622, May.
    13. Dedman, Elisabeth & Lennox, Clive, 2009. "Perceived competition, profitability and the withholding of information about sales and the cost of sales," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(2-3), pages 210-230, December.
    14. Cutillas Gomariz, Mª Fuensanta & Sánchez Ballesta, Juan Pedro, 2014. "Financial reporting quality, debt maturity and investment efficiency," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 494-506.
    15. Robin Litjens & Sanjay Bissessur & Henk Langendijk & Ruud Vergoossen, 2012. "How Do Preparers Perceive Costs and Benefits of IFRS for SMEs? Empirical Evidence from the Netherlands," Accounting in Europe, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(2), pages 227-250, December.
    16. Bushman, Robert M. & Smith, Abbie J., 2001. "Financial accounting information and corporate governance," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1-3), pages 237-333, December.
    17. Christian Stadler & Christopher W. Nobes, 2014. "The Influence of Country, Industry, and Topic Factors on IFRS Policy Choice," Abacus, Accounting Foundation, University of Sydney, vol. 50(4), pages 386-421, December.
    18. Healy, Paul M. & Palepu, Krishna G., 2001. "Information asymmetry, corporate disclosure, and the capital markets: A review of the empirical disclosure literature," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-3), pages 405-440, September.
    19. Ole-Kristian Hope & Wayne Thomas & Dushyantkumar Vyas, 2011. "Financial credibility, ownership, and financing constraints in private firms," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 42(7), pages 935-957, September.
    20. Ball, Ray & Shivakumar, Lakshmanan, 2005. "Earnings quality in UK private firms: comparative loss recognition timeliness," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 83-128, February.
    21. Erlend Kvaal & Christopher Nobes, 2012. "IFRS Policy Changes and the Continuation of National Patterns of IFRS Practice," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(2), pages 343-371, August.
    22. Lambert, Richard A., 2001. "Contracting theory and accounting," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1-3), pages 3-87, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yitang (Jenny) Yang & Roger Simnett, 2020. "Financial Reporting by Charities: Why Do Some Choose to Report Under a More Extensive Reporting Framework?," Abacus, Accounting Foundation, University of Sydney, vol. 56(3), pages 320-347, September.
    2. Wen Hua Sharpe & Peter Carey & Hong Feng Zhang, 2023. "Being private, Big 4 auditors, and debt raising," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 63(2), pages 2295-2345, June.
    3. Elizabeth Carson & Yi (Dale) Fu & Ulrike Thürheimer & Yang Xu, 2023. "The audit market for listed Australian companies from 2012 to 2018: A state of play," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 48(3), pages 524-549, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Aase, Øivind André Strand, 2022. "Effects of Voluntary Audit on Accounting Quality in Small Private Firms," Discussion Papers 2022/1, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Business and Management Science.
    2. Martin Glaum, 2020. "Financial Reporting in Non-listed Family Firms: Insights from Interviews with CFOs," Schmalenbach Business Review, Springer;Schmalenbach-Gesellschaft, vol. 72(2), pages 225-270, April.
    3. Kim, Jinhwan & Olbert, Marcel, 2022. "How does private firm disclosure affect demand for public firm equity? Evidence from the global equity market," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(2).
    4. Roychowdhury, Sugata & Shroff, Nemit & Verdi, Rodrigo S., 2019. "The effects of financial reporting and disclosure on corporate investment: A review," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(2).
    5. Hans B. Christensen & Luzi Hail & Christian Leuz, 2021. "Mandatory CSR and sustainability reporting: economic analysis and literature review," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 26(3), pages 1176-1248, September.
    6. Michael Minnis & Nemit Shroff, 2017. "Why regulate private firm disclosure and auditing?," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(5), pages 473-502, July.
    7. Stefanie Ceustermans & Diane Breesch & Joël Branson, 2017. "Voluntary Disclosure of Sales and the Extent of Trade Credit in Small Private Companies," Accounting in Europe, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(3), pages 388-406, September.
    8. Matthew J. Bloomfield & Ulf Brüggemann & Hans B. Christensen & Christian Leuz, 2017. "The Effect of Regulatory Harmonization on Cross‐Border Labor Migration: Evidence from the Accounting Profession," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(1), pages 35-78, March.
    9. De George, Emmanuel T. & Li, Xi & Shivakumar, Lakshmanan, 2016. "A review of the IFRS adoption literature," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 67599, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    10. Isabel Costa Lourenço & Raquel Sarquis & Manuel Castelo Branco & Nuno Magro, 2018. "International Differences in Accounting Practices Under IFRS and the Influence of the US," Australian Accounting Review, CPA Australia, vol. 28(4), pages 468-481, December.
    11. Aase, Øivind André, 2022. "Size Management in Response to Mandatory Audit Rules," Discussion Papers 2022/2, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Business and Management Science.
    12. Christian Leuz & Peter D. Wysocki, 2016. "The Economics of Disclosure and Financial Reporting Regulation: Evidence and Suggestions for Future Research," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(2), pages 525-622, May.
    13. Emmanuel T. De George & Xi Li & Lakshmanan Shivakumar, 2016. "A review of the IFRS adoption literature," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 898-1004, September.
    14. Silvia Rossetti & Roberto Verona, 2017. "International Differences in IFRS Policy Choice and the Persistence of Accounting Classification: The Case of China," International Journal of Business and Management, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 12(2), pages 1-27, January.
    15. Clarkson, Peter & Gao, Ru & Herbohn, Kathleen, 2020. "The relationship between a firm’s information environment and its cash holding decision," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2).
    16. Christian Gross, 2016. "The Effect of the German Accounting Law Modernization Act on the Comparability of Private Local GAAP and IFRS Firms," Schmalenbach Business Review, Springer;Schmalenbach-Gesellschaft, vol. 17(3), pages 423-460, December.
    17. Rehana Anwar & Jaleel A. Malik, 2020. "When Does Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure Affect Investment Efficiency? A New Answer to an Old Question," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(2), pages 21582440209, June.
    18. Isidro, Helena & Raonic, Ivana, 2012. "Firm incentives, institutional complexity and the quality of “harmonized” accounting numbers," The International Journal of Accounting, Elsevier, vol. 47(4), pages 407-436.
    19. Badertscher, Brad & Shroff, Nemit & White, Hal D., 2013. "Externalities of public firm presence: Evidence from private firms' investment decisions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(3), pages 682-706.
    20. Clatworthy, Mark A. & Peel, Michael J., 2016. "The timeliness of UK private company financial reporting: Regulatory and economic influences," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 48(3), pages 297-315.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:acctfi:v:59:y:2019:i:1:p:87-113. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaanzea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.