Analyse de l'impact des normes IFRS sur l'estimation du risque de défaillance des groupes cotés : Une étude exploratoire sur le marché français

Under the going concern principle, an entity is considered as a going concern in the absence of information proving the contrary. Over the last thirty years, researchers have extensively examined the information relevant to default risk assessment. These empirical works have turned to be highly conclusive while first adopting accounting-based and more recently option-pricing based approaches. However, the 2005 transition from French GAAPs towards IFRS framework may have impacted the valuation methodologies documented previously. Using a sample made of SBF 120 industrial companies, this study examines the impact of the IFRS transition on the default risk assessment as gauged by the main accounting-based (i.e. Altman (1968) ; Ohlson (1980) and Zmijewski (1984)) and option-based models (i.e. Merton (1974) and Vassalou et Xing (2004)). Our empirical results suggest that ceteris paribus sampled listed firms exhibit on average a significant smaller default risk under IAS than under French GAAPs. This finding underlines the fact that contrary to reddition-oriented French GAAPs, the transition to the prospective-based IFRS standards necessarily implies a reconsideration of the hypotheses underlying the common default risk models.