Chairman statement characteristics and firms performance: a study of Malaysian construction companies

Chairman statement in the corporate annual report is classified as narrative accounting and until today it remains as voluntary disclosure. Without guidelines by the accounting standards setters and close monitoring by the regulators, it is hypothesised that company management may exaggerate the qualitative explanation in the chairman statement to impress various groups of stakeholders. In 2008, as sub prima crisis effecting global economic, and eventually reaches Malaysian shore, one of the badly suffered sectors in construction industry. Therefore, this study attempts to examine how these construction companies disclosure their chairman statement in order to reflect the negative impact towards their bottom line financial reporting. Specifically, the study investigates whether there is a significant different between profitable and not profitable construction companies as well as increased or decreased revenue construction companies associate with the characteristics of chairman statement in the corporate annual report. The independent sample t-test showed that there are no significant different, except profitable construction companies tend to provide more picture and graphic in the chairman statement section while reporting their bottom line performance.