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The purpose of this study is to analyse the quality of disclosure on intangibles in presentations to analysts held by firms listed in the Spanish capital market. Given that quantification of the information provides a more precise and convincing message than qualitative disclosure, the information is measured by two indices, which are focused on the specificity of the disclosure.

The reports of all presentations to financial analysts held by Spanish companies listed in the Madrid Stock Exchange are analysed during the year 2000 and 2001. The sample contains 257 reports.

Briefly, the study finds that there are differences in the quality of the information reported to financial analysts in Spain, and that several factors, such as firm size and the levels of profitability and leverage, highly influence it.

This study contributes to the literature by analysing the disclosure of the information on intangibles beyond the commonly used disclosure/no disclosure dichotomy. Consequently, this study introduces different indices in order to analyse not only the extent but also the specificity of disclosure.

Establishing the quality of overall disclosure on intangibles, as well as the categories on which the specificity is higher, should be relevant for management teams when they design their disclosure strategies. In addition, understanding why firms disclose information on intangibles to financial analysts and why its quality varies among them is also useful to the users of accounting information as well as to accounting policy makers.

The paper's aim is to investigate the stock option disclosures of directors and the five most highly remunerated officers in the directors' report of Australian companies for the years 2000 and 2002 and the choice to position these disclosures in the notes to the financial statements as opposed to the directors' report.

The study examines the compliance with mandatory disclosures for stock options for companies in the top 400 and also ascertains if there is consistent compliance across all required categories, including sensitive disclosures.

Although compliance is high for most of the required stock option disclosures, 43 of the 153 firms in the sample did not disclose the amount (value) of the options issued. Another 27 of the companies disclosed a “Nil” value for the value of options issued. Most of the companies disclosed the information in the directors' report, with larger companies and companies in the finance industry more likely to disclose in the notes to the financial statements, where the information is less visible.

The results indicate that companies were secretive about the most sensitive of the required disclosures, the amount (value) of the options issued. Regulators and researchers need to be cautious in conducting compliance studies as although companies appear to be transparent in their disclosures about stock options for directors, closer examination reveals secrecy about sensitive components of the required disclosures.

This study aims to examine the effects of firms’ accounting disclosure policies on stock price synchronicity and stock crash risk, using a sample including 13 emerging markets. Furthermore, this research investigates how these relationships are affected by country-level investor protection and firm-level governance rankings.

This paper uses accounting disclosure measures constructed based on survey questions by Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia (2001, CLSA). The accounting disclosure measure is used to explain the two dependent variables, stock price synchronicity and stock crash risk. The stock price synchronicity measure is defined as the logistic transformation of R2 following Hutton et al. (2009) and Jin and Myers (2006). R2 is taken from the estimation of an extended market model. The stock crash risk variable is measured as the frequency difference between extremely negative and positive stock return residues following Jin and Myers (2006). These stock return residues are taken from the estimation of an extended market model. Because the CLSA firm-level disclosure data are from 2000, this paper matches other data taken from the same year, for consistency. The final sample includes 204 observations in 13 emerging countries.

This paper finds that firms’ stocks are less synchronized with the entire market and have less crash risk if firms have superior accounting disclosure policies. These results suggest that the cost to collect firm-specific information may be decreased for investors if firms are more transparent. Thus, these firms’ stocks have more firm-specific information content. These results also suggest that management is less likely to hide some negative information and release such negative information suddenly in the future if firms have higher levels of accounting disclosure. Thus, these firms’ stocks are less likely to crash. In addition, the influences of firms’ accounting disclosure policies on stock price synchronicity and crash risk are more significant for firms with superior country-level investor protection and firm-level governance rankings. These results imply that external investors place more value on accounting disclosure by well-governed firms because firms with superior governance standards are less likely to intentionally disclose misleading information. Thus, these firms’ stocks can incorporate more firm-specific information and have less crash risk.

The current study is the first to show that the effects of accounting disclosure on stock price synchronicity and crash risk are more pronounced for firms with superior country-level investor protection and firm-level governance standards. Thus, this research extends the literature by providing a comprehensive picture of the influences of accounting disclosure on stock markets. In addition, the existing literature (Chen et al., 2006; Durnev et al., 2004) shows that firms with lower stock price synchronicity are associated with higher investment efficiency because managers invest based on the information in stock prices. Obviously, higher stock crash risk is highly related to higher bankruptcy risk for firms. Thus, examining the effects of accounting disclosure on stock price synchronicity and stock crash risk is of obvious importance to policy makers.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the FSA's new disclosure regime for short selling during rights issues, which it introduced by amending the Code of Market Conduct (MAR 1) under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (FSMA).

The paper outlines the new provisions; explains the legal basis for the new regime; details the specific additions to the Code of Market Conduct; discusses the use of the UK super‐equivalent positions; explains the lack of FSA consultation based on urgent need for action; discusses practical issues for market participants, including compliance systems and controls; provides answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs) relating to the scope of the regime in terms of issuers and transactions covered, the applicability of the disclosure requirement to pre‐existing positions, the timing of intra‐day positions, netting of short and long positions for the purpose of calculating whether a short position reaches the threshold, including short positions in a rights issue in the calculation of the overall net short position, the exclusion of positions an entity holds in its capacity as a market maker, the requirement for the legal entity that holds the short position to make the required disclosures but not to aggregate positions held by its affiliates, the means of disclosure, disclosure deadlines, the content of disclosures, and disclosure of changes in position; and indicates likely further FSA action.

The new measures require market disclosure of short positions of 0.25 per cent or more in companies undertaking rights issues. The deadline for required disclosures is 3.30 pm on the business day following the day the short position threshold is reached. The new rules apply to shares in UK‐listed companies from 20 June 2008. The measures have been implemented as changes to the Code of Market Conduct rather than FSA rules as such. Rather than carrying out a consultation and cost‐benefit analysis as normally required by the FSMA, the FSA apparently relied on the FSMA's provisions that allow immediate amendments in cases of urgent need. The FSA is undertaking a wider review of the capital‐raising process and considering other measures, such as restrictions on stock lending.

On an ongoing basis firms need to have in place systems and controls that identify announcements by companies that they are undertaking rights issues subject to the regime and provide the means to calculate the level of positions held by the firm that might require disclosure.

The paper offers practical guidance by experienced securities lawyers.

This study investigates the interaction between the compulsory and voluntary disclosures in the annual reports of Saudi Arabian companies. The sample comprises both listed and non‐listed companies. The data were analyzed by constructing three separate disclosure indices relating to mandatory disclosure, voluntary disclosure that closely relates to mandatory disclosure and voluntary disclosure that is not closely related to mandatory disclosure. The results reveal that there is a significant, positive correlation between mandatory disclosure and voluntary disclosure related to the mandatory disclosure index. The study also reports a correlation between voluntary disclosure and the other two indices is found to be weak and insignificant. These weak relationships suggest an absence of effective co‐ordination between the parties involved in preparing the annual report. The analysis also reveals no clear pattern of relationships to exist between mandatory disclosure and the types of disclosure in the different industrial sectors examined in this study. The non‐correlation between these groups of disclosure may suggest low co‐ordination between the board of directors and the management in writing parts of the annual report.

Breaks with the prior literature on intellectual capital disclosure practices in two major ways. First, provides a longitudinal examination of intellectual capital disclosure practices in the annual reports of 31 FTSE 100 listed companies from 1996‐2000. Second, investigates the relationship between intellectual capital performance and the extent of intellectual capital disclosure. Between 1996 and 2000 the quantity of intellectual capital disclosure increased. Empirical findings did not indicate a systematic relationship between intellectual capital performance and the quantity of disclosure during the survey period. Results, however, suggest that if intellectual capital performance is too high the amount of disclosure is reduced. This negative association may support the suggestion that firms reduce intellectual capital disclosures when performance reaches a threshold level for fear of competitive advantage being lost. Leverage, industry exposure and listing status was also found to have an influence on the quantity of disclosure.

Empirical studies on corporate social responsibility disclosures have been conducted in Western countries to consider the possible sources of pressure for disclosure and also to examine the effect of corporate size, systematic risk, social constraints and management decision horizon upon such disclosure. This paper undertakes an empirical study in India, in order to extend the understanding of specific relationships between individual corporate characteristics and the types of social responsibility disclosures that public sector companies make. One hundred annual reports from ten industries are analysed use to consider the impact of four independent variables (size, industry, profitability, and presence of social responsibility committee) on the number of disclosures in each of the seven categories (environment, energy, fair business practices, human resources, community involvement, product safety and other disclosures). Regression analysis revealed, amongst other findings, that 28% of the variation in total number of disclosures is explained by four independent variables and that company size is the most significant variable.

This study seeks to investigate whether a firm's financial disclosure size can help investors predict performance.

Controlling for size and industry, the relationship between financial disclosure size and subsequent stock performance for all Standard and Poor's (S and P) 500 firms over a seven‐year period is examined.

It is found that firms with smaller 10‐Ks tend to have better subsequent performance relative to their industries. However, the findings suggest that the performance explanation may not lie in the size of the 10‐K itself. Firms with smaller 10‐Ks tend to perform better because they are smaller in terms of total assets and more focused, with fewer business segments.

While the study is limited to examination of S and P 500 firms, no consistent evidence is found of a relation between changes in a firm's disclosure size and future performance changes.

The results suggest that more disclosure relative to a firm's size is not necessarily bad. Investors attempting to predict future firm performance cannot use the firm's disclosure size alone.

This paper extends two recent Merrill Lynch studies that appear to contradict the extant financial literature's view that increased disclosure reduces the informational asymmetry problem. While the results confirm the findings of these studies, they suggest that the performance explanation may not lie in the size of the 10‐K itself.

This study aims to explore COVID-19-related accounting disclosures using sociological disclosure analysis (SDA) within the context of the developing economy of Bangladesh.

COVID-19-related accounting disclosures from listed banks’ annual reports have been examined using three levels of SDA: textual, contextual and sociological interpretations. Data were gathered from the banks’ 2019 and 2020 annual reports. The study uses the legitimacy theory as its theoretical framework.

The research reveals a substantial shift in corporate disclosures due to COVID-19, marked by a significant increase from 2019 to 2020. Despite regulatory and professional directives for COVID-19-specific disclosures, notable non-compliance is evident in subsequent events, going concern, fair value, financial instruments and more. Instead of assessing the implications of COVID-19 and making disclosures, companies used positive, vague and subjective wording to legitimize non-disclosure.

The study’s insights can inform regulators and policymakers in crafting effective guidelines for future crisis-related reporting like COVID-19. The research adds to the literature by methodologically using SDA to explore pandemic-specific disclosures, uncovering the interplay between disclosures, legitimacy and stakeholder engagement.

This study represents a pioneering effort in investigating COVID-19-specific disclosures. Moreover, it uses the SDA methodology along with the legitimacy theory to analyze accounting disclosures associated with COVID-19.