With the increasing complexity of banking operations, the demand for extensive disclosure has advanced over the years. In 2007, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) has consolidated and expanded disclosure requirements related to financial instruments in IFRS7. Arguably, the adoption of IFRS7 in Europe was met with substantial differences in implementation among countries. Moreover, IFRS7 was launched a few months before the global financial crisis hit Europe. This study examines the level of disclosure according to IFRS7 of 12 banks spread across Europe using their annual accounts from 2007-2010. The banks were chosen on the basis of their market capitalization by the end of 2007. A disclosure index based on IFRS7 was created for this study to evaluate the level of disclosure of the banks. After examining the disclosure level, this paper analyzes if there is a correlation between compliance on disclosure index and bank performance as measured by the Total Shareholder Return. This study aims to find out if a high compliance significantly affects performance in terms of TSR and if it helped banks weather the global financial crisis. The background part provides a broad perspective on disclosure, financial reporting, accounting standards, and IFRS7. It also provides a situation on bank run, and on the recent financial crisis. With the use of secondary data from published accounts of banks, the empirical study presents the disclosure level of banks and TSR performance. The findings suggest that most banks have a selective compliance and moderate fulfillmenton disclosure obligations. Inadequacy is particularly seen in areas where additional disclosure is required by using the implementation guidance of IFRS7. The correlation between compliance and performance is seen to be very minimal which suggests that a high disclosure during a financial crisis does not help prevent huge financial losses.

Tidal current and wave power, as emerging forms of renewable generation, represent innovations that are confronted by significant technological and financial challenges. Currently, the marine energy sector finds itself in a decisive transition phase having developed full-scale technology demonstrators but still lacking proof of the concept in a commercial project environment. After the decades-long development process with larger than expected setbacks and delays, investors are discouraged because of high capital requirements and the uncertainty of future revenues. Although ideas for improving the investment climate can be found, there is a lack of well-founded arguments and coordinated strategies to work towards a breakthrough in the marine energy market. The objective of this research is to provide stakeholder-specific prioritised strategy options for de-risking the commercialisation of tidal current and wave power technologies. A key principle applied is to integrate a wide knowledge spectrum comprising the technology, policy and financing sectors and to compile the information in a holistic and transparent manner. To gain a broad understanding of the characteristics of presently ongoing marine energy activities and the correlated strategic planning, a comprehensive survey was conducted. Based on this multidisciplinary attempt, an all-encompassing appraisal was possible by avoiding over-concentration on stakeholder-specific views or interests. System dynamics modelling was employed to develop a series of cause-effect relationship diagrams of the key interactions and correlations in the field. It was revealed that the circular relationship between two major risks for array-scale projects - reliability and funding - requires coordinated action to overcome. As funding is necessary for improving system reliability (and vice-versa), showcasing 'array-scale success' was identified as the game-changing milestone towards commercial generation. Furthermore, it was found that a number of comparably competent manufacturing firms is required to implement major marine energy projects. This would result from fostering a multi-company market breakthrough concept, based on intensified knowledge sharing and trustful collaborative interaction between competitors. Additionally, effective separation of complexity into 'detail' and 'dynamically complex' constituents was found to be fundamental for identifying long-term, effective solutions. It is decisive to accept this primary classification, as measures appropriately applied on one type of complexity can be counterproductive if applied on the other. Most of the available planning tools and analytical methods do not address the management of dynamic complexity, necessary in innovative environments where flexibility and tolerance of vagueness are indispensable. Successful application of several strategies to deal with both types of complexity in comparable innovation-driven environments was considered suitable for de-risking the commercialisation of marine energy. The challenges for strategy-finding in a demandingly complex and increasingly dynamic environment are addressed in this research by exploiting a case-specific expert knowledge database. The structured information compression and subsequent strategy-finding process is realised based on calculated rankings of impact factors by systems dynamics software and substantiated by representative interview statements. The analysis makes use of multi-level expert knowledge and the application of a control-loop-based methods. The systems approach as applied in this research comprises the combination of interview-based (bottom-up learning) processes and the application of prioritised strategy options in the form of concerted management action (top-down planning). The approach of processing multi-level interview data by system dynamics modelling represents a powerful method to detect and assess ongoing developments and thus to advance strategy-finding. The systematic and unbiased approach to identify the top-level drivers for commercialising marine energy supports the long-term creation of investor confidence, based on a concept of transparency and credibility.

Magister Commercii - MCom / The drastic decline in stock prices on the 24th October 1929 sent a frantic wave of panic across the US. Merely a century later, on the 29th September 2008 another financial crisis hit the globe - this time leaving most countries devastated. The main objective of this study is twofold: 1) to determine whether leading indicators have sufficient predictive capacity to predict global financial crises; and 2) to use the Efficient Market Theory (EMT) and/ or Behavioural Finance Theory (BFT) as a means of developing a theory explaining the potential impact bad public announcements had on the level of investor confidence before the 1929 Great Depression and the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. This study was not only designed to qualitatively conceptualise the notion of the term “investor confidence” whilst drawing special attention to its frailty using the 1929 Great Depression and the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, but also assist governments, reserve banks and key institutions to develop effective strategies of mitigating the effects of the latter financial crisis as well as provide guidance on how another financial crisis can be prevented. This study extracted bad public announcements from 40 books and 60 journal articles using 6 NBER-based leading economic indicators (LEI) and 4 systematic risk-based leading non-economic indicators (LNEI) in order to: 1) qualitatively assess the extent to which leading indicators can be used to predict global financial crises 3 – 8 months in advance; and 2) use the EMT and/ or BFT to provide an explanation concerning the potential impact that bad public announcements had on the level of investor confidence before the 1929 Great Depression and the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.