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.

Nowadays, accounting standards available and employed in the world can be categorized in three difference sources: first of all, International Accounting Standards (IAS)/International Financial Reporting Standards(IFRS) issued by International Accounting Standards Board(IASB); second, U.S. GAAP issued by Financial Accounting Standards Board(FASB);and the last, accounting standards issued by individual country¡¦s accounting standards institution. The global trend is highly developing in international capital markets and multinational businesses operating strategies. As such, the investors in international capital markets have demands eagerly on clear and understandable financial statements for better investment analyses, and decisions. Therefore, a set of internationally-unified accounting principles is necessary in such economic environments. In these years, convergence to or direct adoption of IFRS have been an international hot topic and popularly discussed worldwide, and it seems an irrevocable trend to converge from local accounting principles to IFRS. R.O.C. Financial Supervisory Commission has announced the time schedules and structures of IFRS adoption, and set up several steps for public companies to adopt IFRS starting from 2013. There are still some significant differences existed between R.O.C. accounting principles and IAS/IFRS. Thus, this study was intended to assist Taiwan companies to understand the differences, make decisions on accounting policies while adopting IFRS, and evaluate the influences on financial statements and business operation activities, so that Taiwan companies can converge from ROC GAAP to IFRS with the international trend smoothly and successfully. This thesis contains five chapters. Chapter One is the introduction. Chapter Two is description of accounting organizations and literature, including the development of organization establishing IFRS and the application of IFRS in the world. Chapter Three is the comparison between R.O.C. accounting standards and IFRS, which firstly illustrates the current situation of R.O.C. accounting standards; secondly, compares the concept of IFRS to the R.O.C. accounting standards, and then uses the literature analysis method to identify the differences item by item. Chapter Four is the analysis of impacts and strategies, and various considerations while adopting IFRS. Chapter Five is the conclusion and research suggestion. The conclusion of the thesis includes as below, In the early years, the R.O.C. accounting standards were initially formed based on U.S. GAAP. However, ROC accounting standards are updated or revised based on IFRS gradually while more and more countries adopt IFRS, which contains ¡§principle-based¡¨ accounting standards. Such ¡§principle-based¡¨ standards can avoid specific detailed exception rules under ¡§rule-based¡¨ ones, and it also can reduce the possibility that companies create special arrangements in form to bypass the economic recognition in substance and qualify the standard requirements at the meantime. There are still several differences between IFRS and R.O.C. accounting standards. Therefore, the key point for companies to implement IFRS successfully is to understand the principles and concept structures of IFRS, and to compare the differences between IFRS and R.O.C. accounting standards. Since ROC accounting standards will be converged to IFRS by direct adoption, Taiwanese companies should evaluate the differences of measurement, classification, and disclosure requirements between IFRS and R.O.C. accounting standards. And, companies should prepare well their convergence plans in consideration of possible impacts and management changes, which will be also helpful for local companies to develop global operation strategies.

The announcement made by the Financial Supervisory Commission, Executive Yuan, R.O.C. for roadmap of the adopting International Financial Reporting Standards (hereafter ¡§IFRS¡¨) on May 14, 2009 was a major earthquake to all companies in Taiwan. The first wave of IFRS adoption will hit all listed companies and those companies in the financial services industry in 2013; and the second wave will hit the rest of the public companies in 2015. To most Taiwanese business entities, IFRS is a brand new accounting principle. They don¡¦t have too many ideas on what IFRSs are, how different are IFRSs from Taiwan GAAP, how IFRS can be adopted, or the size of impact IFRSs will have once it is adopted? When facing all these unknown, the public companies in Taiwan, other than to follow the announcements from the regulatory authorities, can resort to no one but their independent auditors for further assistances. Over the past decade, the Big-4 accounting firms have devoted tremendous efforts in research and development activities on the adoption of IFRSs in accordance with the instructions of their global headquarters. Therefore, at the time when Taiwanese public companies are required to adopt IFRS in accordance with the roadmap, the service opportunities in Taiwan are monopolized by the Big-4 firms, leaving the medium and small practices in Taiwan a competitive disadvantage for entering the market because their resources are very limited. Therefore, it is the goal of this thesis to research and explore the strategies smaller firms may adopt, with limited resources on hand, to expand the service opportunities in the upcoming IFRS era.

Zugl.: Erlangen, Nürnberg, Univ., Diss., 2009

Universiẗat, Diplomarbeit u.d.T.: Mader, Daniel: Die Bilanzierung immaterieller Vermögenswerte nach HGB und IFRS im Vergleich mit künftig geltenden Rechtsnormen unter Berücksichtigung ausgewählter Aspekte der Prüfung von immateriellen Gütern--Ulm, 2008.

Zugl.: Augsburg, Universiẗat, Diss., 2009.

Zugl.: Mannheim, Universiẗat Diss., 2009.

High quality financial reporting is critically important for bank regulation, particularly market discipline, but limited evidence exists on why banks provide different levels of financial reporting quality. I examine whether institutional investors and financial analysts impact bank financial reporting quality. Although I find no impact of analysts on bank financial reporting quality, institutional ownership is positively associated with financial reporting quality, and this relation is strongest for banks with high information asymmetry and for “monitoring” institutional investors. Institutional investors also sell shares following the announcement of a restatement, suggesting they are willing to use the threat of exit as a mechanism to influence bank managers and demand financial reporting quality. Finally, I find institutional investors demand financial reporting quality primarily for high risk banks and also reduce ex-ante bank risk and ex-post non-performing loans. Collectively, these results suggest institutional investors are an important component of bank governance. / text

The importance of the financial markets has constantly been increasing during the last few decades. With the increase of the importance of the financial markets the popularity and importance of financial reporting have also increased dramatically. The importance of financial reporting has logically created a need for a lot of research in the area. It is for instance important to understand the links financial reporting has with the different parts of the business and its implications on them and the business in general. Based on that the research conducted has focus on the following research issue – identify, understand and explain the implications of financial reporting on leadership’s decision making process as well as identify, understand and explain their effects on leadership’s strategic choices. The aim of the research process is to reach some general conclusions on the issue derived from a certain context – the crisis in the financial sector originating from the US subprime mortgage crisis as well as provide basis for further research on the issue.

This thesis aims to investigate whether frequency of mandatory financial reporting affects management focus on long-term growth. Evidence from the market has illustrated how managers within listed firms sometimes strive to meet market expectations on the latest reported earnings regardless of long-term consequences (see for example Graham, Harvey & Rajgopal, 2005; Grinyer, Russell & Collison, 1998). Yet, the existing literature has neglected to research market pressure in terms of financial reporting frequency and its proposed influence on long-term growth. This study seeks to find if a more frequent mandatory reporting affects managers to more often sacrifice long-term growth in terms of reduced R&D investments. By comparing six different stock exchanges with different interim reporting requirements, this study empirically examines the hypothesized relationship, using a robust multiple regression analysis based on 320 observations during the sample period 2008-2012. The statistically significant results show a negative correlation, suggesting that firms that are required to disclose quarterly reports invest less in R&D than firms that are only required to disclose semi-annual reports. A negative correlation is observed for the whole sample as well as for the five sectors individually. The results provide additional empirical evidence to the research fields of financial reporting, managerial myopia and earnings management.