Financial Statement Disclosures for Hong Kong H‐Shares: Purposes, Subject and Number
International financial markets are rapidly becoming a single global market. For these markets, most large institutional users are not satisfied with the existing levels of disclosures by multinational firms. One purpose of this research study was to investigate existing footnote disclosure practices for H‐Shares in Hong Kong. Another purpose was to determine if the existing financial statement disclosures for H‐Share companies are comparable to the other companies traded on the HKSE. This study classified, summarised and analysed financial statement disclosures for H‐Share Hong Kong companies. In a recent US study, Barth and Murphy (1994) developed a framework to analyse the required footnotes for companies in the United States. This study uses a similar approach to examine the situation in Hong Kong. However, there are some significant differences. The Barth and Murphy study is extended to include the review of actual disclosures in Hong Kong financial statements. In this way, this project attempts to determine if existing disclosures for Hong Kong H‐Share companies can be classified according to the purposes identified in the US study and by a review of Hong Kong standards. Descriptive statistics are provided for all disclosures. The results indicate that similar purposes have been met for both H‐Shares and other Hong Kong companies traded on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
ACCOUNTING DISCLOSURE PRACTICES IN THE UNITED-STATES AND THE UNITED-KINGDOM
This paper examines the frequency and timing of accounting disclosures made by domestic and foreign firms listing securities in either the United States, the United Kingdom, or both. We examine differences in disclosure rules between the two jurisdictions and in firms' compliance with these disclosure rules. We also investigate the association between the frequency and timing of our sample firms' accounting disclosures and five factors which vary both within and between jurisdictions: interactions between voluntary and mandatory disclosure; investor demand for information; domicile and the effects of being foreign; firm size; and U.S. exchange listing. The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are currently debating whether to relax accounting and disclosure rules for internationally traded firms relative to those of domestic firms (Siconolfi and Salwen [1992]). Evidence on factors that influence what, when, and where firms choose to disclose should be an important input to policy decisions about changes in
Do management forecasts of earnings affect stock prices in Japan
The authors are both Associate Professors, Graduate School of Business, Uris Hall, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027. We are grateful to Jim Haggard for significant programming assistance, and to The Center on Japanese Economy and Business at Columbia University for their financial assistance in obtaining the data. We also acknowledge the cooperation provided by Nihon Keizai Shimbun, in particular H. Tanaka and J. Uno for hours of conversation with invaluable wisdom.