The legislated Accounting principles modernizing act, abbreviated BilMoG, caused a fundamental accounting reform in Germany. The most important international accounting standards IFRS were implemented in to elsewise conservative accounting rules. Due to fact the main users of GAAP in Central Europe are SME, the description and analysis of IFRS's implementation in to German GAAP seems to be beneficial for SME's financial statement informative value for the first year as of December 31, 2010. Major receiver of SME's financial statement is not the institutional investor but financing bank and other creditor. The aim of the thesis is to verify assumed informative value's improvement of SME's financial statement as their most important finance reporting form. The verification of defined hypothesis is based on rigorous and systematic SME's characteristic analysis as well as their applicable GAAP's. After recognition of the most important German GAAP's changes follow the IFRS comparison and a feasibility evaluation of German qualitative characteristics used not only by SME. The consequent empirical research mergers the provided analysis and recognition of the fundamental and by SME frequently used balance positions with quantitative and qualitative assessment of adjustment to be made for preparation of consolidated financial statement in accordance with German accounting rules and principals. This research is based on near 70 available audited Czech SME's financial statements for the financial years before and after partly IFRS adoption into German GAAP (BilMoG). The findings and results establish the verified informative value's improvement of financial statements. The finance lease recognition (necessary capitalisation) persists to be the most significant adjustment between Czech and German financial statement after BilMoG. This fact clearly shows the deficiency of current Czech GAAP. Extent and number of required adjustments are on the decrease and the current German GAAP seems to be applicable for SME's purposes either. Thesis conclusion draws the attention and requirement to improve the Czech GAAP. Also continuance of prudence principle after partly IFRS adoption is fixed. Surprisingly the positive tax law impact is found out, especially not only on allowances or provisions, but also on other relevant accounting areas as such asset definition, discounting of long term provisions, finance lease recognition etc.

Die vorliegende Dissertation untersucht empirisch das Auftreten und die Konsequenzen von Bilanzpolitik deutscher nicht-kapitalmarktorientierter Unternehmen. Sie besteht aus drei separaten Forschungsarbeiten, in denen Jahres- bzw. Konzernabschlüsse nach der Umstellung der handelsrechtlichen Rechnungslegung auf den Stand des Gesetzes zur Modernisierung des Bilanzrechts (BilMoG) in den Jahren 2009 und 2010 analysiert werden. Die Arbeiten verdeutlichen, dass neben dem vergleichsweise gut dokumentierten Anreiz zur Vermeidung von Steuerzahlungen weitere bilanzpolitische Motivationen bei deutschen nicht-kapitalmarktorientierten Unternehmen einschlägig sind. Die Ergebnisse enthalten Evidenz dafür, dass von der Bundesnetzagentur für Elektrizität, Gas, Telekommunikation, Post und Eisenbahnen regulierte Gasnetzbetreiber Wahlrechte in Erlösobergrenzen maximierender Art und Weise ausüben. Darüber hinaus geben die Ergebnisse Hinweise darauf, dass Ergebnisglättung betrieben wird, Berufsmanager das Periodenergebnis maximieren und Unternehmen mit geringer Eigenkapitalausstattung gezielt ihr Eigenkapital erhöhen. / This cumulative PhD-thesis consists of three papers. Using the adoption of new German GAAP in 2009 and 2010 the three studies investigate earnings management of private firms in the absence of the well documented incentive to minimize tax payments. The results show that in regulated industries regulation mechanisms can be a main driver for earnings management. Furthermore, the studies indicate that (i) private firms engage in earnings smoothing, (ii) outside-managers use income increasing accounting methods, and (iii) firms with a higher likelihood to violate debt covenants use equity increasing accounting methods.

This thesis investigates whether IFRS adoption has led to an increase in the relevance of accounting information for investment decisions. Furthermore, the effects of IFRS are implicitly compared across accounting traditions. As such,  the effects of IFRS on the “quality” of financial reporting are measured based on the cases of listed firms in Germany and listed firms in the UK. This study approaches the effects of IFRS on the quality of financial reporting from two angles. First a review of the academic literature is done to determine whether there has been a general consensus about the effects of IFRS adoption on financial reporting of listed firms in Germany and the UK. As a result of this literature study, a number of propositions are deduced about the effects of IFRS. Subsequently, the investigation of the effects of IFRS takes a statistical perspective. Financial and accounting data are obtained for two samples, one of German listed firms and another of UK listed firms. A number of empirical models are used to determine the quality of financial reporting, including the earnings-returns association (Lev ,1989; Lev & Zarowin, 1999), asymmetric sensitivity of earnings and asymmetric persistence of earnings (Basu, 1997), and the market-to-book ratios (Roychowdhury & Watts, 2003). Additionally, a new tool is introduced for a joint interpretation of the econometric test results, leading potentially to a new method of financial report analysis under dynamic regulatory conditions. Significant statistical evidence is found suggesting a drastic reduction (to the point of complete elimination) in income smoothing in Germany corresponding to the transition from the German national GAAP to IFRS. Additionally, with the introduction of IFRS, the information content of accounting earnings in German firms appears to have increased substantially, while market-to-book ratios have converged towards “1”. On the other hand, the introduction of IFRS in the UK corresponds to statistical evidence consistent with a shift from asymmetric timeliness of earnings under UK GAAP to a significant downward bias in earnings under IFRS. The study also shows significant inter-industry differences in the effects of IFRS that suggest that the inconsistencies in the results of previous studies may have been due to the significant noise created by diverse samples, or due to biased industry representations in the data.