Traditional financial statements fail to satisfy users' needs for information because they provide only a partial view regarding a company's risk profile. Recently, risk reporting has become the focus of interest. This, however, has not been translated into empirical research that investigates risk reporting in corporate annual reports. This study addresses this gap through examining risk reporting practices in Egypt. The key objectives are to measure the extent of mandatory and voluntary risk reporting, identify the nature of voluntary risk reporting and investigate firm characteristics, corporate governance and ownership structure that could explain variation in risk reporting practices in the annual reports of Egyptian companies. In addition, the study aims to identify factors that may obstruct the presentation of risk reporting in annual reports of Egyptian companies. In the first phase, the annual reports of 106 listed companies for the years 2006/2007 were examined to measure the extent of risk reporting and examine potential determinants of risk reporting. In the second phase, 15 semi-structured interviews were carried out with academics, external auditors, regulators and financial managers to identify factors that may obstruct risk reporting in corporate annual reports. Results indicate a low level of compliance with mandatory risk reporting requirements. Also, results indicate a low extent of voluntary risk reporting with a tendency to report more past and qualitative than future and quantitative risk-related information. It is suggested that competition, role duality, board size, ownership concentration, profitability and auditor type influence the risk reporting practices of Egyptian companies. The study identified accounting practice problems (such as lack of effective profession and enforcement mechanisms), accounting education problems (such as inadequate local accounting textbooks) and the Egyptian culture of secrecy, as key obstacles to the presentation of risk reporting in corporate annual reports.

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While acknowledging the impact other change agents have on governmental accounting change, this study found that public sector officials played prominent roles in promoting the adoption and implementation of accrual accounting in the central government of the selected cases. This indicates the impact individuals within the public sector organisation have on the reform processes, which have been mostly overlooked in previous studies on governmental accounting. The revised process model of public sector accounting change is used to discuss the findings from this study.

Two types of agency problems tend to predominate in the modern corporations, i.e., principal-agent (owner-manager) conflicts and principal-principal (large shareholder appropriation) conflicts. This PhD project aims to identify the principal-principal agency problems, to investigate contextual factors that affect the usefulness of governance mechanisms, to explore satisfying ways to measure agency costs, and to test the effectiveness of selected corporate governance mechanisms in mitigating agency costs in Chinese listed companies. The main discussions lie in the causes and formations of Type II agency issues, and how effective governance mechanisms work to mitigate these issues. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses are used. An in-depth case study is undertaken and a sample of 6344 observations of Chinese listed companies during 2000-2005 is used in econometric models to examine the role of various governance mechanisms in alleviating agency costs. There are some significant findings. State ownership does not have constant detrimental impact on firm performance or directly contribute to agency costs. Legal person ownership is found to be most effective in reducing agency costs but has similar impact as state ownership for performance. Foreign ownership has mix results and managerial ownership is negligible. Board and external auditing both have significant impact on firm performance and agency costs in different ways, as well as various control variables. In terms of direct measurement of agency costs, other receivables seem to generate most significant results, while free cash flow does not. Return on equity/asset also has significant results as predicted. This is a comprehensive study to contribute to existing literature on Type II agency problems and empirical research in China. Findings on these aspects will help the listed companies devise effective measures for improving corporate governance practice in China and other transitional economies. An improved corporate governance system will strengthen Chinese companies' competitiveness on global market.

New evidence to show that the ICAEW's decision to provide strong support for consolidated accounts might be attributed to F.R.M. de Paula's late intervention in the regulatory formulation process is also presented. Applying the theory of path dependence, this study concludes that the preference for legal entity-based accounts by company directors, which can be explained along with the accountancy profession's attitudes towards group accounting, was shared by a large number of the units and became slow to change.

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Motivated by the inadequate research in understanding the determinants of takeover wealth creation, as well as the theoretical and practical importance of information environment in the takeover market, this thesis examines the wealth effects of information environment on UK takeovers. It regards information dissemination as a process inherent in takeover announcements, along which, factors capturing the characteristics of information sender, information content, information recipient and market condition, are addressed to form three key research issues. First considered are the wealth effects of misvaluation conditional on information signalled by payment and financing methods of takeovers. The results indicate that a price run-up via an upward revaluation follows undervalued bidders releasing good news (non-equity financed cash deals). Secondly, this research is concerned with the wealth effects of investor sentiment, towards the information released, at a whole market and individual firm level. The results show that high investor sentiment drives up target firms’ announcement returns and further causes an increase in takeover premium. The last issue addressed is the relation between information asymmetry and gains to frequent bidders. The results suggest that information asymmetry declines in a merger series while serial non-equity financed cash deals generate decreasing bidders’ announcement returns since the scale of their upward revaluations continually decreases with subsequent announcements. These three groups of results form a mechanism of information environment’s wealth effect as follows. Takeover announcements release new information. With the arrival of new information investors update their assessments of firm value. The scale of revaluation is determined by a firm’s information asymmetry, the direction of it depends on firm misvaluation, information signalled by takeover announcements and the investor sentiment in interpreting this information.

This thesis examines two empirical studies. Firstly, it examines the relationship between corporate governance characteristics (relating to the size, composition of independent members, financial expertise and meeting frequency of boards of directors and audit committee) and audit quality. Secondly, the study investigates the effectiveness of corporate governance characteristics and higher quality auditors in constraining earnings management. There are three proxies of audit quality employed: audit fees, non-audit fees and industry specialist auditors. Based on data obtained from the FTSE 350 between 2005 and 2008, the first empirical findings suggest that independent non-executive directors on board demand an additional and extensive audit effort from the auditor in order to certify their monitoring function, resulting in an increase in the audit fees and the perceived audit quality. The results also indicate a positive relationship between independent board and non-audit fees, suggesting that independent board support the view that the joint provision of audit and non-audit services does not necessarily compromise auditor independence, but rather that it broadens the auditors’ knowledge and improves audit judgement. The findings from the second empirical study suggest that higher quality auditors (which either charge higher audit fees or are industry specialist auditors) are likely to reduce earnings manipulation. However, no evidence suggests that NAS fees affect earnings management. In addition, the current study finds inconsistent results linking the corporate governance characteristics and opportunistic earnings. Overall, both findings are consistent with agency theory, which states that independent board and higher quality auditors are associated with effective monitoring, which in turn helps to improve the quality of financial reporting. The findings are of potential interest to policy makers, professionals and boards of directors, especially on issues relating to audit quality and the mandating of corporate governance practices.