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The purpose of this paper is to examine the informational value of Shariah-compliant disclosure in the Malaysian initial public offerings (IPOs) prospectus and whether Shariah-compliant status has an impact on the IPO initial return when adopted as a signalling mechanism.

It uses data from 320 IPOs for Shariah-compliant companies listed on the Bursa Malaysia between 2004 and 2013.

It finds that the degree of IPO underpricing for Shariah-compliant companies is 19.97 per cent with investors earning significant returns on the first trading day. For the effect of different factors on the degree of IPO, we find that the size and type of IPO offers have a significant impact on the degree of IPO underpricing. Other economic confidence factor models fail to yield economically plausible parameter values.

The study contributes to the literature in a number of ways. It is the first to evaluate the effect of Shariah-compliance status regulation in Malaysian market, hence it provides an insight into the effectiveness of such regulation. Second, while the existing Shariah-compliant IPO studies in the same market focus on Shariah status at the date of the studies being conducted, this study uses the information around IPO time. The information that investors receive around IPO time may influence investors’ decision and valuation of the IPOs in the aftermarket. Specifically, this study is different from the previous research, as it investigates whether Shariah-compliant companies would change the average degree of IPO underpricing for companies listed on Bursa Malaysia.

The objective of this paper is to develop a model that can predict financial distress amongst public listed companies in Malaysia using the logistic regression analysis.

The logistic regression analysis used in this paper is geared towards developing a model that can predict financial distress amongst public listed companies in Malaysia.

The results prove that five financial ratios have been found to be significant and useful for corporate failure prediction in Malaysia. The overall predictive accuracy is 91.5 percent and this demonstrates that the logistic regression analysis used is a reliable technique for financial distress prediction. In addition, the predictive accuracy of the model in this paper is higher than that of previous studies, which utilised discriminant analysis rather than the method adopted in this research.

The economic crisis mostly began to affect Malaysia's economic standing in July 1997 causing many companies to fall into financial distress, as they were unable to cope with the unexpected downturn. A financial distress prediction model is therefore required to act as a predictor of Malaysian public listed companies' well‐being prior to a financial crisis and to gauge the warning signals of the onset of a downturn in order to strategize their survival techniques during this phase. This study focuses on public listed companies in Malaysia, thus the model adopted is tailored to suit the given context.

The main aim of this study is to assess the level of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure of 44 government‐linked companies (GLCs) listed on Bursa Malaysia and to ascertain the relationship of certain company characteristics; namely size, age, profitability and leverage on the total CSR disclosure from the year 2005 to 2006.

Content analysis is deployed to determine CSR disclosure. A disclosure index consisting of 16 items was developed based on four general themes: human resource, marketplace, community and environment to assess the disclosure level. The relationship between company characteristics and total disclosure was examined using multiple linear regression analysis.

The major finding of this study is that the theme of disclosure has shifted from human resource to marketplace. This is followed by human resource, community and, finally, environment. Ironically, companies are not only disclosing good news, but also bad/negative news. This study provides further evidence that is, to a certain extent, some GLCs have influenced other companies' practices to disclose CSR information. Company size was found to be positively significant associated with the total disclosure. The remaining variables were found to be insignificant in explaining the total disclosure.

This is the first paper that looks into CSR activities, extent, themes and the determinants of CSR disclosure in the annual reports of Malaysian GLCs. The Malaysian Government, Bursa Saham, Security Commission and other relevant parties could take heed of the findings to further improve CSR awareness, practices and disclosures and quality in GLC.

The study intends to shed lights on whether the risk factors disclosed in the initial public offering (IPO) prospectus in Malaysia are able to reflect the actual risks of stocks once they are traded on the exchange. In other words, the purpose of this paper is to explore whether prospective investors will be able to benefit, in terms of the more accurate risk information, from the risk disclosures in the IPO-prospectus.

Using data obtained from 118 IPO prospectuses of Malaysian companies that issued shares on Bursa Malaysia in the period from 2009 to 2016, the authors investigated whether the “risk factor” section in the IPO prospectuses provides sufficient risk-relevant information to investors. To determine whether companies disclose risk-relevant information, a detailed content analysis of the risk sections was carried out to obtain an aggregate measure of risk disclosure.

The findings revealed that the aggregate measures of risk extracted from these texts did not successfully predict the following outcomes: the volatility of companies’ future stock prices, the sensitivity of future stock prices to market-wide fluctuations and the severe declines in future stock prices.

As indicated by the findings, the authors, therefore, deduce that the IPO prospectuses of Malaysian companies do not provide sufficient risk-relevant information in the risk factor section. The findings imply that overall the management of Malaysian companies would neither be able nor willing to disclose the right and relevant information to the public via IPO prospectus.

Many corporate risk disclosure studies focus primarily on the disclosures of annual reports of companies. The study intends to fill the gap by focusing on the risk disclosure in the IPO-prospectus. Risk disclosures in IPO-prospectus are farmore extensive than annual reports and, therefore, provide a richness of information that will not be available in the annual reports.

The chapter aims to examine the challenges and the opportunities for the development of Islamic stockbroking in Malaysia.

The chapter adopts library research to discuss the concept of Islamic stockbroking. It also employs a semi-structured interview with industry players to prognosticate the future development of Islamic stockbroking in Malaysia.

The study concludes that the future of Islamic stockbroking in Malaysia is very promising, triggered by drivers on both the supply side and the demand side. The large Muslim population, wealth and economic growth are among the key factors for the development of Islamic stockbroking from the demand side. On the other hand, the Shari’ah compliance of 89% of Malaysian stocks, Malaysia’s position as an Islamic finance hub and the natural progression of Islamic finance are all factors underpinning the future of Islamic stockbroking from the supply side. However, lack of qualified human resources, political inconsistency, information technology infrastructure, product innovation as well as public perception are obstacles to its development.

This chapter will add new literature in contemporary Islamic finance, as not many studies have been done on the subject.

The purpose of this research is to assess the implementation of sustainable practice by Malaysian property developers, particularly on social and environmental perspectives.

This is a qualitative research where content analysis is used to analyse leading property companies’ websites, annual reports, corporate responsibility and sustainability reports, and carbon disclosure reports.

Findings from this research indicate that the majority of the developers have their corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives in place and there are variations in their approaches and reporting process. Of all, philanthropic activities are the mostly widely reported followed by human resource initiatives. Even though the majority of property companies reported their environmental practices, only the top few developers had their projects certified by sustainability rating agencies.

As this project was restricted to the top ten Malaysian developers, the results do not reflect how other companies, particularly the smaller ones, adopt CSR in their business. However, this project revealed valuable findings regarding the magnitude of CSR initiatives, particularly on social and environmental perspective, adopted by the top ten Malaysian property developers; this is useful for the Malaysian government authorities in formulating CSR‐related policies particularly on environmental sustainability. As well, the findings of this project can be a useful reference to other property companies which are keen to contribute to sustainable development, particularly on social and environmental perspectives.

There has been limited literature on CSR in the Malaysian property industry thus far. Previous research papers are mainly about environmental sustainability of property companies, sustainable practice by Malaysian real estate investment trusts, and CSR perception of house buyers and developers. Therefore, to fill the gap in the literature, this research is designed to assess the implementation of sustainable practice by Malaysian property developers, particularly on the social and environmental perspectives.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the association between corporate ownership structures and audit fees paid to external auditors by Malaysian companies listed on Bursa Malaysia. This study focusses on the extent of the auditor’s reliance on the client’s internal control inasmuch as the corporate ownership structures are varied, and, ultimately, affect the audit fees.

This study applies the agency theory in formulating three hypotheses that guide the results analysis. By employing a multi regression model for a sample of 345 Malaysian companies listed on Bursa Malaysia, this study examines the relationship of ownership structure, namely, managerial ownership, foreign ownership and government ownership with audit fees using data for 2010.

The results show a significant positive relationship between audit fees and firms with larger foreign ownership and government ownership but no significant relationship with firms with higher managerial ownership. This study contributes recent evidence concerning the relationship between corporate ownership structure and audit fees.

Regulators may consider ownership structure on the standards or regulation setting in order to be practical and operationalized in line with the impact associated with different ownership structures. The practitioners may also design appropriate methodologies and procedures for the different ownership structures for high-quality service and to standardize the risk mitigation process.

The ownership structures have different influences on the audit fees, as well as complexity of the firms and their profitability.

The study looks upon certain percentages of ownership structures, and how they affects audit fees, firms complexity and profitability.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of corporate governance characteristics on audit report timeliness in Malaysia. The corporate governance characteristics examined are board independence, audit committee size, audit committee meetings and audit committee members' qualifications.

Design/Methodology/Approach – The sample comprises of 703 Malaysian listed companies from Bursa Malaysia, for the year 2009. It excludes companies from the finance-related sector as they operate under a highly regulated regime under supervision by the Central Bank of Malaysia. Further, regression analysis was performed to examine the audit report timeliness determinants.

Findings – Results show that audit report timeliness is influenced by audit committee size, auditor type, audit opinion and firm profitability. However, no association was found between board independence, audit committee meetings, audit committee members' qualifications and audit report timeliness.

Research limitations/Implications – It is a cross-sectional study of the year 2009. Practical implications for policy makers are consideration of the minimum submission period for audit reports Regulators' support for firms to have larger audit committee sizes is also discussed.

Originality/Value – The study investigates the impact of corporate governance on audit timeliness in light of the recent amendments to the Malaysian Code of Corporate Governance made in 2007.

This paper examines the impact of corporate governance attributes and ownership structure patterns on corporate performance of Malaysian listed companies following the revised code on corporate governance in 2007. To provide an insightful assessment on the revised code's implications on firm performance, data before (2006) and after (2009) the revised code in 2007 were analyzed.

The study involves analyses of 170 observations in a two-year period, 2006 and 2009. The sample of the study was selected on the basis of a stratified random sampling procedure to allow a representative sample of the various sectors listed on Bursa Malaysia. Based on data extracted from the annual reports of 2006 and 2009, corporate performance was captured using accounting performance indicators (return on assets and return on equity). In addition to descriptive analyses, multiple regression analysis was used to assess the influence of the governance and ownership structure attributes on firm performance.

The findings revealed a decreasing trend of the financial performance of the sample companies over the two-year period which this study attributes to the recent global financial meltdown. In terms of corporate governance compliance, the results showed that there were cases of non-compliance of the basic requirements of the corporate governance code in Malaysia even after the revised code in 2007. In addition, the multiple regression results showed that only board meetings had significant negative association with firm performance following the revised code. None of the other variables had significant impact on firm performance before and after the revised code. Firm size and leverage, as control variables, however, showed significant association with firm performance.

Given the lack of non-compliance by some of the sample companies in Malaysia to some basic requirements such as the required percentage of independent directors on corporate boards and the insignificance of governance attributes in enhancing performance, this study suggests that the revised code needs reinforcement, at best, or even an overhaul change to suit more to the Malaysian business environment.

In distinction from most prior studies, this study provides ex-ante and ex-post examination of the relationship between corporate governance and firm performance, following changes in the regulatory environment. Such analysis is expected to have some practical implications in indicating whether recent regulatory changes are practiced in the corporate environment. This study draws evidence from Malaysia in adding to our understanding on whether changes in regulatory frameworks enhance firm performance.

While there is an increased demand from various corporate stakeholders on the need for public companies to have risk management frameworks as well as a stand-alone risk management committee to mitigate risks and simultaneously improve performance, this study investigates the effects of the risk management committee attributes on firm performance, and the role of board size is highlighted on this relationship in Malaysian listed companies.

Both accounting- and market-based performance measures have been used for measuring performance. A dynamic model using the generalized method of moments (GMM) has been employed to control for potential endogeneity, simultaneity and unobserved heterogeneity.

The findings reveal that risk management committee attributes such as size, independence and meetings negatively affect book-based performance measures and positively affect market-based performance measures. Moreover, board size positively moderates the risk management committee attributes and performance relationship. The study embraces the predictions of agency theory and resource dependence theory.

The findings are practically significant for Bursa Malaysia, Securities Commission Malaysia to assess the compliance of the Corporate Governance Code (MCCG, 2017) and for academia to further explore significant relationships in other emerging economies.

The paper contributes to multiple aspects: first, it studies the impact of risk management committee attributes on firm performance; second, it investigates the moderating effect of board size on RMC–performance relationship; in the end, the study employs dynamic modeling for estimation process to avoid dynamic endogeneity considered a main econometric problem for CG–performance relationships.