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This study aims to explore the impact of international financial reporting standard no. 8 (IFRS 8) on segmental information reporting (SIR) after the post-implementation review (PIR) issued by international accounting standards board (IASB). This impact is examined in relation to quality and quantity as SIR dimensions represent, respectively, the level of reported items and segments. As a complement to this, the chief operating decision maker (CODM) identity is considered to understand the patterns of SIR dimensions.

The SIR of the UK financial times stock exchange 100 (FTSE-100) listed companies over the period 2013-2016 is the research’s scope. Several criteria were developed to ensure a representative research sample. A disclosure index approach was used facilitating the use of content analysis for data collection, which pertained to the dimensions of SIR published by the FTSE-100 following IFRS 8 PIR.

The IFRS 8 PIR has had several implications shaping the growing trend that is underpinned by the SIR dimensions published by FTSE-100 companies. First, the SIR quantity dimension positively corresponds over 2013-2016, but it still does not meet IASB’s demands. This, secondly, also applies to the quality dimension of SIR to uncover inconsistency with the existing knowledge being held regarding the introduction of IFRS 8. More specifically, the response of the FTSE-100 to mandatory and voluntary items seems to be in transition of substitution. Third, CODM’s identity was an insightful dimension in rationalising the understanding through the aforementioned dimensions. It is undertaken by boards of directors or executive committees and the case of the latter is associated with more disclose in relation to the CODM’s identity.

These findings reveal implications to: academics undertaking further research about IFRS 8 PIR to challenge or endorse this conclusion, using similar or alternative approaches; the stakeholders’ decision-making process; and policymakers to re-think the structure of mandatory and voluntary items.

This paper provides empirical evidence on the quality and quantity of SIR published by FTSE-100 companies following IFRS 8 PIR.

Purpose: The purpose of this chapter is to establish the sustainability reporting practices of FTSE 100 companies using integrated reporting (IR), corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate governance (CG) as proxies. Our study has adopted a holistic approach by combining dimensions of each factor in one variable.

Design/Methodological Approach: The study data cover all FTSE 100 companies over five years, thereby generating 505 company-year observations for each variable of the study. Authors have collected the data from Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) reports filed with Thomson Reuters and International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC).

Findings: Results indicate the practice of sustainability reporting in FTSE 100 companies both per variables and dimensions levels. It shows, for example, 89% of the companies reported on their charitable donations. The study also found that 79% of the FTSE 100 companies reported on their sustainability committees whilst 86% and 85% reported on their emission reduction and waste reduction policies, respectively. Results show that the CSR impact is higher than CG regarding IR adoption. The Logistic Model manages to explain a high percentage of IR adoption while controlling for other misspecification issues such as multicollinearity.

Practical Implication: The study highlights practice of substantiality reporting for public shareholding companies listed on FTSE 100 Index along with interaction among proxies. These will be of interest to companies not only in the FTSE 100 Index but also those outside. Companies can rely on these factors to strengthen their governance, social responsibility and reporting policies in consideration of all stakeholders and not just a few. We believe that we shed a quantitative explanation on IR adoption by CSR and CG factors, and we expect an impact on practices following results of our study.

Social Implication: Results have indicated that at least 60% of companies in the FTSE 100 Index have imbedded social responsibility activities, such as charitable giving, waste reduction initiatives, emissions reduction policy and sustainability committees.

The claimant, Mr Fleurose had been employed by JP Morgan Securities Ltd, a member of the Securities and Futures Authority (SFA), as a senior cash arbitrage trader. The London Stock Exchange (LSE) carried out an investigation into allegations that, on 28th November, 1997 he had, acting with his immediate superior, manipulated the FTSE 100 index in order to ensure that JP Morgan Ltd did not have to make a payment under a binary option. Under the terms of the option JP Morgan Ltd would have had to pay out if both the FTSE 100 Index and the Standard & Poors (S&P) Index were higher at the end of the month than at the beginning. On 28th November, the final day of trading, the S&P Index was significantly higher than its opening level but the FTSE 100 index was near the critical level at or below which JP Morgan Ltd would be relieved of its obligation to pay approximately £475,000 under the option. The applicant entered a wave of automated ‘sell’ orders in stocks in the leading five companies of the FTSE 100 list in the final eight minutes of trading of 28th November. The total value of those orders amounted to £11,247,525 and the ‘sell’ orders entered in the final six seconds of trading were at stated prices well below the market levels at the time. The FTSE 100 Index reacted by falling below the critical level. An immediate investigation into the sudden late fall in the Index was launched by the London Stock Exchange which attributed it to trading activity by JP Morgan Ltd. The firm conducted its own investigation and acknowledged that it had, through the activities of the Equity Derivatives Trading group (Mr Fleurose's group) breached Rule 2.10 of the London Stock Exchange Rules which prohibited member firms from doing an act or engaging in a course of conduct with the sole intention of moving the Index value. The firm was fined £350,000 by the London Stock Exchange. Mr Fleurose himself was not subject to the disciplinary jurisdiction of the London Stock Exchange but he was to that of the Securities and Futures Authority (SFA) as one of its Registered Representatives, along with his immediate superior.

Drawing on statements made under the transparency in supply chains provision of the UK Modern Slavery Act, this paper aims to examine how firms are responding to modern slavery risks in their supply chains.

Using an institutional theory lens, a content analysis of modern slavery statements by financial times stock exchange (FTSE) firms is carried out. The analysis focusses on sources of modern slavery institutional pressure and changes that firms have made in their structures, policies and practices in response to modern slavery risks.

Three sources of institutional pressure are inferred from modern slavery statements: international human rights accords (coercive), multi-stakeholder initiatives (mimetic) and professional standards (normative). Changes made by firms in direct response to modern slavery include adopting new policies, strengthening contract terms, establishing working/steering groups and creating new key performance indicators. FTSE 100 firms have been more proactive than FTSE 250 firms in making these changes, as have firms in higher risk industries.

The analysis covers FTSE firms only. Responses to modern slavery risks by non-FTSE firms deserve attention.

The UK Modern Slavery Act relies on non-government organisations and consumers to hold firms to account over modern slavery. Policymakers should be aware that while this strategy might work with high profile firms, it is less applicable to firms that operate below the public radar.

The paper shows that institutional theory has validity for explaining corporate responses to modern slavery risks.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically test dynamic hedging, using data from the FTSE-100 and Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 futures indices.

The authors introduce a dynamic continuous-time hedging model in futures markets. The authors further relax the statistical-independence assumption between the spot price and basis risk.

The authors show that the investors are, on average, quite risk averse. The authors find that a one unit increase in the price volatility reduces the hedged FTSE-100 (S&P 500) by 645.62 (777.07) units. Similarly, a one unit increase in basis risk reduces the hedged FTSE-100 (S&P 500) by 403.57 (378.54) units. The authors’ approach shows that risk-averse investors should decrease their hedge (i.e. increase their equity allocation) with an increase in index price risk.

These findings are helpful to risk managers dealing with futures markets.

The contribution of this paper is that it successfully introduces a dynamic continuous-time hedging model in futures markets.

This paper aims to explore current trends in how companies disclose climate-related risks and opportunities in their financial statements. As part of the authors’ analysis, they examine: whether forward-looking assumptions and judgements are typically considered in reporting climate-related risks/opportunities; whether there are differences in the reporting practices of firms in carbon-intensive industries versus non-carbon-intensive industries; and whether negative media reports have an influence on the levels of disclosure a firm makes.

The authors chose content analysis as their methodology and examined the financial statements published by firms listed on the UK’s FTSE 100 between 2016 and 2020. This analysis is framed by Suchman’s three dimensions of legitimacy, being pragmatic, cognitive and moral.

Climate-related disclosures in the notes and financial accounts of these firms did increase over the period. Yet, overall, the level the disclosures was inadequate and the quality was inconsistent. From this, the authors conclude that pragmatic legitimacy is not a particularly strong driving factor in compelling organisations to disclose climate-related information. The firms in carbon-intensive industries do provide greater levels of disclosure, including both qualitative and quantitative (monetary) content, which is consistent with cognitive legitimacy. However, from a moral legitimacy perspective, this study finds that firms did not adapt responsively to negative media coverage as a way of reflecting their accountability to broader public norms and values. Overall, this analysis suggests that regulatory enforcement and a systematic reporting framework with adequate guidance is going to be critical to developing transparent climate-related reporting in future.

This paper contributes to existing studies on climate-related disclosures, which have mainly examined the ‘front-half’ of annual reports. Conversely, this study aims to shed light on these practices in the “back-half” of these reports, exploring the underlying reasons for reporting climate-related risks and opportunities in financial accounts. The authors’ insights into the current disclosure practices make a theoretical contribution to the literature. Practitioners can also draw on these insights to improve how they report on climate-related risks and opportunities in their financial statements.

Purpose: This chapter considers whether it would be beneficial, and appropriate based on the application of equality law to date, for the UK government to mandate gender equality objectives set by the United Nations as requirements in initiatives aimed at stimulating the economy, specifically the Northern Powerhouse. It considers the success of the Northern Powerhouse and its impact on females in the region.

Method: The data used as a basis for analysis in this chapter were obtained through secondary research. A mixture of quantitative and qualitative data is used, with a heavy weighting towards quantitative information.

Findings: Gender inequality remains a significant issue for females in the United Kingdom. The UK government have implemented the requirements of Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) through a non-prescriptive framework, resulting in specific industries and businesses lobbying for further development. Gender equality was not a specific consideration in the launch of the Northern Powerhouse, leading to challenges in its implementation.

Originality: There has been significant research undertaken on gender inequality in the United Kingdom, however, this chapter is the first to explore the relationship between the requirements of CEDAW and the government initiative, the Northern Powerhouse.

Tracker funds offer an attractive balance between risk and return, by providing the profit of the index, with the reduced risk associated with the broad market cover. An effectively designed tracker fund will achieve best tracking of the index with minimal running and trading costs. This paper aims to investigate the use of improved optimisation methods for the design and maintenance of tracker funds.

Most current methods of tracker fund optimisation use quadratic programming (QP), due to its simple formulation and efficient solution. However, the explicit tracking of the return of the index and the optimal selection of the subset of shares composing the fund is not directly available using these methods. This paper investigates ways to overcome the shortcomings of current methods by using genetic algorithms (GA). A GA based tracker fund optimisation method is applied to Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 data using computer simulations.

Tracking performance is presented and compared to QP. Results show the advantage of the new method for various conditions of tracker fund subset size and update rates. In particular, there is an improved performance when evaluating the errors in optimising returns of the index.

The paper intentionally sets out to use commercially available software to implement the optimisation approaches, thus demonstrating that the advantages of using GAs are easily realisable and do not require tailor made software.

The paper provides a direct comparison between the established approach of QP and a GA. The implementation uses commercially available software and is therefore easily realisable in practice.

An abundance of academic studies have been devoted to the investigation of corporate social responsibilities, and although the business world seems to have accepted the general idea that it should be socially responsible, it has never been asked what executives perceive their social responsibilities to be. Additionally, extensive research in an attempt to identify the relationship between corporate social and financial performance by investigating companies' annual and financial reports has shown largely inconclusive results. This paper therefore aims to investigate the insights of corporate executives on both the issues of the social responsibilities of business and the link between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and financial performance. With respect to corporate executives, the authors investigated if there are differences between the perceptions of executives of FTSE 100 and FTSE All‐Share.

The data was collected via online survey and semi‐structured interviews with the executives of FTSE All‐Share companies. Out of 531 executives, the authors received 82 responses of a response rate of 17 per cent. They contacted 178 executives representing FTSE 100 companies and received 29 responses of a response rate of 17.6 per cent. In order to build a phenomenological approach to this study, the authors interviewed four executives to document their opinions and thoughts.

The results indicate that the business world holds a narrow view of its social responsibilities whilst maintaining that it is possible to be both profitable and respectful to its stakeholders. The analysis also reveals that socially responsible businesses employ CSR in pursuit of their commercial interests and consider it to be their competitive advantage. Moreover, the business seems to have integrated CSR into all its operations and activities and considers it as a necessity rather than luxury, which suggests that CSR and financial performance are in synergy.

One major contribution of this study is the difference analysed between perceptions of executives of FTSE 100 and other FTSE All‐Share companies on whether CSR policies and activities are implemented only when extra financial resources are available. This might suggest that FTSE 100 companies are more likely to have already integrated CSR into their business strategy and therefore devote financial resources to their CSR programs. Other FTSE All‐Share companies, in contrast, might still be regarding CSR as an add‐on and therefore spend monies on CSR only when they have extra financial resources available. The similar explanation can be offered for the difference between perceptions of executives of FTSE 100 and other FTSE All‐Share companies as to whether implementation of CSR policies and activities will increase overheads, increase share prices in the following years and help raise new capital.

This paper aims to provide unique interdisciplinary research evidence between the risk information disclosed by auditors and the risk information disclosed by corporate managers. In particular, it investigates the association between the level of risk information disclosed by auditors (key audit matters [KAMs]) and the level of corporate narrative risk disclosure.

The study sample consists of the UK FTSE all-share non-financial firms across six financial years. The authors use a computer-aided textual analysis, and the authors use a bag of words to score the sample annual reports.

The results suggest that KAMs and corporate narrative risk disclosure levels vary across the industries. The authors found a significant positive association between the risk information disclosed by auditors and the risk information disclosed by corporate managers. Also, the authors found that FTSE 100 firms exhibit higher significance between the ongoing concern and the level of narrative risk disclosure.

The study approach helps assess the level of management risk reporting behaviour due to the new auditor risk reporting standards. This helps to emphasise how auditors and companies engage and communicate risk-related information to stakeholders. Standard setters should suggest a more detailed reporting framework to protect the shareholders. The unique findings are incredibly beneficial to the regulators, standard setters, investors, creditors, suppliers, customers, decision makers and academics.

This paper provides a shred of extraordinary evidence of the impact of auditor risk reporting and management risk reporting. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no study has yet investigated the corporate narrative disclosure after the new audit standards ISA 700 and ISA 701.