The determinants of the quality of accounting information disclosed by French listed companies

The aim of this paper is to relate the quality of disclosure in the annual reports of French listed companies to possible determinants representing agency theory. The choice of France is based on the fact that until now only transnational studies have investigated the overall extent of French corporate annual reports disclosure (Barrett, 1977), (Williams, 1992), while research on determinants of the extent of disclosure by British, Swedish, Japanese, Swiss or Spanish have already been conducted. The sample includes 100 industrial and commercial companies whose corporate reporting have been studied from 1991 to 1995. The quality of disclosure is measured by an index based on the expectations and opinions of French financial analysts concerning the information disclosed today. Independent variables are measures of ownership diffusion, use of external financing, domestic share listing, multiple share listing and profitability. These independent variables have been selected in order to investigate the real influence nowadays of French major accounting practice characteristics: weak influence of financial markets on disclosure, strong secrecy traditions and strong influence of information disclosure requirements. Relations are assessed using univariate analyses and multiple regressions. Only domestic and mulitple listing status play a significant role in the disclosure quality over the 1991-1995 period. As disclosure requirements justify this influence, it suggests that compliance with those requirements is considered to be enough to solve agency problems. Ownership diffusion has no influence on disclosure quality and leverage has a significant influence only in 1995. Nevertheless, since 1993, as the influence of these variables is getting stronger, it indicates a trend toward a better transparency in French companies' reporting practices. Profitability has no influence on disclosure quality. So our results provide new insight into French reporting practices and suggest topics for additional research.