The effect of corporate governance quality on the strategic use of Non-GAAP disclosures to beat earnings benchmarks

• Autor(a) principal: Nunes, Filipa dos Reis
• Data de Publicação: 2012
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/5260
• topic: Non-GAAP measures; Pro forma; Earnings benchmarks; Corporate governance; Medidas non-GAAP; Benchmarks referentes a indicadores de rentabilidade; Governação das sociedades

This study investigates the impact of corporate governance quality on the use of non-GAAP earnings measures to beat strategic earnings benchmarks. For this purpose, five strategic earnings benchmarks are considered: beating analysts’ forecasts, reporting growth in profits, portraying better performance, beating industry performance and avoiding losses. Firms’ governance quality is measured through an index combining 41 attributes. For a sample of European firms, empirical results suggest that corporate governance has a strong influence on firms’ voluntary disclosure decisions. Overall, firms’ governance quality is capable of reducing managers’ propensity to use non-GAAP metrics to meet or beat earnings thresholds. However, it does not seem to have similar influence on all benchmark beating strategies. In fact, the discretionary disclosure of non-GAAP earnings to exceed analysts’ forecasts and to avoid losses is not mitigated by good governance practices. Also, governance mechanisms reduce the magnitude of the difference between non-GAAP earnings and both GAAP measures and analysts’ expectations.