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Purpose – This study investigates the status of related party disclosure in an emerging economy, that is, India. The reason behind concentrating on India is due to its opening of the economy in 1991 to attract foreign investment. Hence, it is significant that investors are provided with credible information. The accounting value of ‘secrecy’ underlying India and the voluntary nature of detailed reporting about related parties in this country further motivated the present study.

Methodology/Approach – The research method includes a content analysis of the ‘related party disclosure’ section of annual reports of a sample of Indian companies for the financial years 2002–2006.

Findings – Indian companies disclosed more than the required minimum level of related party disclosure as required in the Indian accounting standard. No association between related party disclosure with market capitalization, industry affiliation and foreign listing was found for the year 2006. However, when the scores of all the five years 2002–2006 were considered manufacturing and automotive companies disclosed more about related parties than diversified, service and technology.

Research Limitations – The limitations of our findings rests upon the fact that we have not examined the effect of factors such as the composition of management of each company and the presence of Indians/Non-Indians in management.

Originality/Value of the Paper – Most studies exploring disclosure practices are directed towards developed countries. The disclosure practices in developing countries is an under researched area. This paper contributes towards the existing literature by taking the case of an emerging economy, that is, India.

The published annual report and accounts of a company are regarded as a main source of information for making investment and other decisions. One assumption used by readers of such accounts is that the financial statements reflect transactions which have been made at arm's‐length. However, the presence of related parties may mean that free market dealings do not exist. In this case the accounts are, at best, misleading and, at worst, fraud may have been perpetrated. Although a number of countries have issued accounting standards which require companies to disclose certain information in respect of related party transactions, this had not occurred in the UK by the summer of 1995. A proposal had been issued by the Accounting Standards Committee (ASC), but this received severe criticism and could not be amended before the ASC was disbanded. Its successor body, the Accounting Standards Board (ASB) has issued its own proposals, taking into account some of the earlier criticisms. The proposals attempt to define related parties, the transactions which are entered into and the disclosures which should take place. The most recent proposals have also received severe criticism mainly because of the additional work entailed for companies and their auditors in relation to the possible benefits to be gained by the users. An examination of the new proposals reveal that there are some definitional problems and that it is far from certain that the disclosures will do more than alert the reader to the presence of related party transactions, nor is it certain that the disclosures will provide information which is useful for sophisticated decision making and it would be naive to believe that such disclosures would prevent fraud.

In the light of the risks involved in related party transactions, transparent disclosure is particularly important. The impact of related party transactions is relevant for all types of company, but there is greater complexity in business groups where they can be easier to hide. Focusing on business groups, this study aims to analyze the accuracy and transparency of related party transaction information, its understandability, compliance with legislation and comparability. It also examines whether shareholders can be fully informed of all related party transactions by reading only the consolidated financial statement.

Three case studies are used. The units of analysis are three corporate groups in which the parent company is listed on the Milan Stock Exchange as of 1 July 2015. The authors use two different sets of information. The first is secondary data from company procedures, annual reports and other official documents. They analyzed the separate financial statement of each firm, including the separate financial statement of the parent company and compared all relevant information from the consolidated financial statement and the separate financial statement. The second set is primary data from face-to-face semi-structured interviews and observation.

This study underlines that there is no requirement for a specific classification of related party transactions disclosure, and as a consequence, it is not possible to compare information. An unambiguous framework for disclosure, established by regulation or legislation, for use by companies supplying related party transactions information would be useful.

The results offer possible recommendations for regulators to improve presentation of related party transaction information without increasing the amount of information required.

The purpose of this study is to present the results of an experiment that examines the effects of client management’s increased disclosure of related party transactions (RPTs) on auditors’ judgments of financial reports that contain RPTs.

This study used a 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment to investigate auditors’ judgments in response to questionable RPTs in a Chinese context.

The results show that the auditor participants assessed a lower likelihood that the client’s financial statements were intentionally misstated and that they were less likely to request additional evidence when the client management chose to disclose more, as opposed to less, detailed RPT information in their disclosure. Moreover, there was a significant interaction between disclosure level and client incentive to manipulate earnings on the likelihood of the auditor requesting additional evidence.

This study should be of interest to regulatory agencies that have expressed concerns over auditing practices related to RPTs.

The findings from this study help to provide a more in-depth understanding of disclosure literature by investigating voluntary RPT disclosure and the moderation role of clients’ incentives to manipulate earnings.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between related party transactions disclosure (RPTD) and firm valuation in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), an emerging market.

Data on study variables were obtained manually from the published financial statements of all listed companies in the stock market during the period 2008-2012. Panel regression analysis models with fixed and random effects were used to ensure reliability of results. Several robustness checks were undertaken on the study outcomes.

The empirical results show that there is a significant negative relationship between RPTD and firm valuation in the UAE. RPTDs for subsidiaries and associates have the most damaging impact on firm valuation. Other control variables such as corporate governance disclosure (CGD), debt to equity, asset tangibility and sales growth show significant impact on firm valuation.

The potential difference in the understanding of what constitutes “related party” across companies may affect the extent of related party disclosure across companies. Furthermore, some variables are not controlled for such as ownership structure and cultural values.

This paper provides useful practical guidelines for regulatory agencies, corporate managers and other stakeholders for improving the financial reporting system.

RPTD was measured according to the International Financial Reporting Standards (IAS 24) standards. Furthermore, the impact of new control variables such as CGD and product market competition was tested for financial and non-financial sectors.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of audit committee (AC) characteristics (size, independence, the number of meetings and expertise) on compliance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) for related party disclosures (CRPD) in the South African context.

This paper is based on an analysis of the consolidated financial statements of 120 non-financial firms listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) for the period 2012 to 2014. Panel regressions have been used.

The findings of this paper reveal that CRPD is positively influenced by AC independence. However, AC size and the number of AC meetings do not affect CRPD. Regarding expertise, the authors find that there is a positive and significant relationship between CRPD and have combined industry expertise with accounting and financial expertise. However, while accounting expertise by itself is associated with CPRD, industry expertise by itself is not associated with CRPD.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there are no empirical studies that have addressed the effect of AC characteristics on compliance with IFRS for CRPD.

Transactions between a firm and its own managers, directors, principal owners or affiliates are known as related party transactions. Such transactions, which are diverse and often complex, represent a corporate governance challenge. This paper initiates research in finance on related party transactions, which have implications for agency literature. We first explore two alternative perspectives of related party transactions: the view that such transactions are conflicts of interest which compromise management’s agency responsibility to shareholders as well as directors’ monitoring functions; and the view that such transactions are efficient transactions that fulfill rational economic demands of a firm such as the need for service providers with in-depth firm-specific knowledge. We describe related party transactions for a sample of 112 publicly-traded companies, including the types of transactions and parties involved. This paper provides a starting point in related party transactions research.

This study aims to examine the effect of the auditor-client relationship (ACR) on related party transaction (RPT) types of disclosure, either RPT-efficient or RPT-conflict. This study also examines whether family controlling shareholders (FCS) negatively affect the ACR in RPT types of disclosure.

This study uses multivariate regression on 2,203 year-observations of companies listed in Malaysia during the period 2014–2017.

This study finds weak evidence that auditors can mitigate companies’ RPT type (RPT-efficient and RPT-conflict) disclosure while maintaining a close ACR. However, an interaction between FCS and ACR reduces the RPT-conflict disclosure. Additionally, the Big 4 auditors slightly increase the RPT-conflict disclosure, however, the relationships are inversed if the close ACR involves the FCS. The Big 4 auditors also increase RPT-efficient disclosure although in a close ACR with FCS. Meanwhile, an interaction between non-Big 4 auditors and FCS in close ACR reduces both types of RPT disclosures.

The findings suggest that a close relationship between auditors and clients in firms with significant family control could compromise auditor’s skepticism. The FCS can easily influence the auditors to agree with the ways they treat the RPT disclosure. Therefore, policymakers may have to revisit auditors’ rotation policies in Malaysia, especially those involving FCS.

Trust, familiarity and future fee dependency are significant threats to auditor independence in a close ACR. This study contributes to the literature by examining the effect of a close ACR on RPT types of disclosure from a network theory perspective.

This paper aims to analyse how the supreme audit institution (SAI) monitors related party transactions (RPTs) in the Brazilian public sector. It considers definitions and disclosure policies of RPTs by international accounting and auditing standards and their evolution since 1980.

Based on archival research on international standards and using an interpretive approach, the authors investigated definitions and disclosure policies. Using a topic model based on latent Dirichlet allocation, the authors performed a content analysis on over 59,000 SAI decisions to assess how the SAI monitors RPTs.

The SAI investigates nepotism (a kind of RPT) and conflicts of interest up to eight times more frequently than related parties. Brazilian laws prevent nepotism and conflicts of interest, but not RPTs in general. Indeed, Brazilian public-sector accounting standards have not converged towards IPSAS 20, and ISSAI 1550 does not adjust auditing procedures to suit the public sector.

The SAI follows a legalistic auditing approach, indicating a need for regulation of related public-sector parties to improve surveillance. In addition to Brazil, other code law countries might face similar circumstances.

Public-sector RPTs are an under-investigated field, calling for attention by academics and standard-setters. Text mining and latent Dirichlet allocation, while mature techniques, are underexplored in accounting and auditing studies. Additionally, the Python script created to analyse the audit reports is available at Mendeley Data and may be used to perform similar analyses with minor adaptations.

This paper aims to measure the extent of related party transactions disclosure and investigates their determinants across all listed companies in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) stock market during 2010 to 2012.

An index was manually constructed for related party transactions disclosure in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) (IAS 24) using company financial statements.

Empirical results show relatively low level of related party transactions disclosure in the UAE emerging market. Furthermore, the multiple regression analysis (OLS) shows that related party transactions disclosure has significant relationships with the number of board members, audit quality, block-holders’ ownership, company size, leverage and product market competition. The multiple regression analysis (OLS) also highlights that industry type plays a significant and crucial role in disclosure levels across companies.

This paper does not control for some corporate governance mechanisms such as audit committee characteristics.

This paper provides useful guidelines for several stakeholders including policy makers, accounting standard setters and corporate managers.

IFRS (IAS 24) standards were used to measure the strength of related party transactions disclosure. In addition, several variables were tested such as corporate governance mechanisms, ownership structure and product market competition on related party transactions disclosure over time; in an emerging market such as the UAE.