Quality of financial reporting in the Asia-Pacific region: The influence of ownership composition

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the causes and interrelations between ownership composition and financial reporting quality of firms in the Asia-Pacific region.

The study uses panel data for 420 firms for the period 2011-2013 (three years) from Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and Pakistan.

Overall, the authors find that ownership concentration is positively associated with the financial reporting quality. However, institutional ownership and foreign ownership are positively associated with financial disclosure in developing countries. Further, the result indicates that institutional and public ownership is positively associated with financial reporting in developed countries. Among the control variables, the authors find that larger firms are negatively correlated with financial reporting quality in Asia-Pacific.

These results highlight the highly individualized effects of blockholders and the need for research to further understand the mechanisms through which shareholders impact financial reporting quality.