Country effects on European mandatory disclosure of financial key performance indicators (Gli effetti dell’ambiente sulla disclosure obbligatoria di indicatori di prestazione economico-finanziaria)

By | 2017-12-29T17:23:43+01:00 December 27th, 2017|

Bini Laura, Dainelli Francesco, Giunta Francesco/ Financial ReportingRiviste / Fascicolo: 1-2011


European Union Directive 51/2003 requires the publication of Financial Key Performance Indicators (FKPIs) in order to standardize this practice. We aim to test whether and to what extent the directive realizes the standardization of FKPIs. Because country factors are obstacles that the international standardization process intends to remove, we study their influence on disclosure practices in two very different countries in terms of cultural, economic, and regulation environments: Italy and the United Kingdom. Disclosure practices involve two dimensions: the quantity of indicators published and their quality. Quality is measured in terms of compliance with qualitative characteristics advocated by the IASB’s Framework. We select a representative sample of listed companies in both countries. The FKPI quantity and quality are hand collected from their 2008 annual reports. After controlling for leverage, industry, size, and profitability, we find that the number of indicators published in an annual report does not vary by country. The Directive may have helped this process. On the other hand, country factors drive the quality of FKPI communication. Thus, this finding suggests that standard setters and regulators should shift their attention to the quality aspects of FKPIs.

Keywords: financial ratios, mandatory information, management commentary, information quality


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The role of performance indicators in management commentary

By | 2017-12-27T17:40:12+01:00 December 27th, 2017|

Silvi Riccardo, Bartolini Monica/ Financial ReportingRiviste / Fascicolo: 3-2011


Recent literature on financial reporting underlines that, in order to meet the changing needs of business reporting users, more information with a forward-looking perspective should be provided, with a focus on those factors that are responsible for longer-term value, including non-financial measurers. This article hence focuses on the importance of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in Management Commentary (MC). Through content analysis, we examine a sample of 111 reports from around the world (following different local and/or international regulations). The paper explores how organizations in practice use KPIs for external purposes, first investigating to what extent KPIs provide the information required by the MC frameworks, and, secondly, whether such KPIs have the suggested characteristics. Results show that although KPIs seem to potentially play a valuable and recognized role in providing the information required by the different MC frameworks, a large number of companies have not provided an effective and balanced picture of the drivers and factors that will lead their future performance. This paper contributes to the scarce research on the effectiveness of different approaches to regulate MC reports, with a specific focus on KPIs. It also highlights some critical issues concerning what and how KPI information should be produced and reported.

Keywords: management commentary, key performance indicators, content analisys, financial measures, non financial measures, forward-looking indicators


 

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Business model in management commentary and the links with management accounting

By | 2017-12-27T17:38:35+01:00 December 27th, 2017|

Cinquini Lino, Tenucci Andrea/ Financial ReportingRiviste / Fascicolo: 3-2011


Management commentary (MC) is a non mandatory narrative report that provides a context within which to interpret the financial position, financial performance and cash flows of an entity to associate to the financial statement. Within the framework of MC, the paper focuses on the role of the “business model” in supporting information required by MC section “nature of the business”. Furthermore the potential role of Management Accounting in providing the managerial financial and non financial information to improve the quality information on the “nature of the business” is explored.

Keywords: Business model, management accounting, management commentary


 

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Country effects on European mandatory disclosure of financial key performance indicators (Gli effetti dell’ambiente sulla disclosure obbligatoria di indicatori di prestazione economico-finanziaria)

By | 2017-12-22T12:20:23+01:00 December 6th, 2017|

Bini Laura, Dainelli Francesco, Giunta Francesco/ Financial ReportingRiviste / Fascicolo: 1-2011


European Union Directive 51/2003 requires the publication of Financial Key Performance Indicators (FKPIs) in order to standardize this practice. We aim to test whether and to what extent the directive realizes the standardization of FKPIs. Because country factors are obstacles that the international standardization process intends to remove, we study their influence on disclosure practices in two very different countries in terms of cultural, economic, and regulation environments: Italy and the United Kingdom. Disclosure practices involve two dimensions: the quantity of indicators published and their quality. Quality is measured in terms of compliance with qualitative characteristics advocated by the IASB’s Framework. We select a representative sample of listed companies in both countries. The FKPI quantity and quality are hand collected from their 2008 annual reports. After controlling for leverage, industry, size, and profitability, we find that the number of indicators published in an annual report does not vary by country. The Directive may have helped this process. On the other hand, country factors drive the quality of FKPI communication. Thus, this finding suggests that standard setters and regulators should shift their attention to the quality aspects of FKPIs.

Keywords: financial ratios, mandatory information, management commentary, information quality


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