Business Commons^™

Comment Letter On Sec’S Proposed Rule On Conflicts Of Interest Associated With The Use Of Predictive Data Analytics By Broker-Dealers And Investment Advisers, File Number S7-12-23, Sergio Alberto Gramitto Ricci, Christina M. Sautter

Faculty Works

This comment letter responds to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed rule Release Nos. 34-97990; IA-6353; File Number S7-12-23 - Conflicts of Interest Associated with the Use of Predictive Data Analytics by Broker-Dealers and Investment Advisers. Our comments draw on our scholarship relating to laypersons’ participation in securities markets and the corporate sector as well as on the role of technology in corporate governance.

We express concerns that the SEC’s proposed regulation undermines individuals’ ability to access capital markets in an efficient and cost-effective manner. In the era of excessive concentration of equities ownership and power, often with negative societal …

It Governance Matter: A Structured Literature Review, Nariman Osama Kandil, Ehab Kamel Abou-Elkheir, Amr M. Kotb

All Works

The aim of this paper is to critically explore information technology governance (ITG) context, its consequences, its various aspects, its determinants, disclosure, maturity, and challenges. There are some motivations that urge the researchers to carry out this study. First, the review of prior relevant literature reveals a limited number of studies addressing the IT governance context, its consequences, its various aspects, its determinants, and challenges. Second, very little is known about the potential implications of IT governance within the business and how it is significant to the decision-makers (e.g., shareholders, board of directors, executives, etc.). Finally, little research employs the …

Strategic Use Of Volume Of Financial Items In 10-K Reports, C. S. A. Cheng, Jiajia Fu, Wenli Huang, Jiao Jing

School of Accountancy Faculty Publications and Presentations

We investigate whether firms limit the volume of financial items in annual reports (including the financial statements and footnotes) to obfuscate poor future firm performance, and how investors react to this reduced volume. We estimate abnormal volume to capture managers’ discretion over reporting in the 10-K and find that abnormally low volume predicts poor future earnings. This relation is more pronounced in firms where the market has difficulty in detecting managerial intervention in the disclosure process. We also find that abnormally low volume predicts negative future returns, suggesting that managers benefit from disclosing fewer financial items by delaying the incorporation …

What’S Scope 3 Good For?, Madison Condon

Faculty Scholarship

Opposition to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (“SEC”) new rule on updated climate risk reporting has focused on one category of disclosures as particularly objectionable: Scope 3 emissions.⁷ Otherwise known as “supply chain emissions,” Scope 3 emissions have been voluntarily reported by a growing number of companies since the term was invented as part of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol in 2001.⁸ They include all the emissions both up and downstream of a corporations’ own activities: the emissions of the privately-owned factory that produced the shoes Target sells, as well as the emissions you burn while driving to the …

Does Disclosure Of Advertising Spending Help Investors And Analysts?, Sungkyun Moon, Kapil R. Tuli, Anirban Mukherjee

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Publicly listed firms have the discretion to disclose (or not) advertising spending in their annual (10-K) reports. The disclosure of advertising spending can provide valuable information because advertising is a leading indicator of future performance. However, estimates of advertising spending are available from data providers, arguably mitigating the need for its formal disclosure. This study argues that firms’ disclosure of advertising spending provides more complete and public information and therefore lowers investor uncertainty about future firm performance (idiosyncratic risk). Empirical analyses show this effect is largely driven by the negative effect of disclosure of advertising spending on analyst uncertainty. Consistent …

Sec Reporting Of Cybersecurity Incidents, Michaela Morosky

Honors Scholar Theses

This paper documents the reporting to the SEC of 197 major incidents of cybersecurity breaches among public firms in the years 2011-2019. My goal is to contribute to the debate on the need to revise the disclosure guidance by evaluating the extent to which cybersecurity breaches are disclosed in SEC filings under the current regulatory regime. In evaluating the individual breaches, I document whether prior to the SEC’s 2022 proposed amendment, firms were already following the SEC recommendation of disclosing material cybersecurity breaches in a timely manner. I find that it is extremely rare for a firm to follow the …

Non-Gaap Earnings And Stock Price Crash Risk, Charles Hsu, Rencheng Wang, Benjamin C. Whipple

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We investigate whether non-GAAP earnings disclosures increase stock price crash risk. Consistent with non-GAAP disclosures allowing managers to inflate investors' perceptions about firm performance, our results indicate that income increasing non-GAAP reporting increases crash risk. We also find that managers can use non-GAAP reporting as a substitute for earnings management to withhold bad news from investors (the traditional explanation for crashes). Finally, we find a positive association between non-GAAP reporting and the likelihood of subsequent events that can trigger a crash. Overall, our evidence is consistent with some non-GAAP disclosures exposing investors to risks of large and sudden price declines.(c) …

Natural Disasters, Risk Salience, And Corporate Esg Disclosure, Qiping Huang, Yongjia Li, Meimei Lin, Garrett A. Mcbrayer

Finance Faculty Publications and Presentations

We examine how natural disasters affect the corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure policies of firms located close to disaster areas. We study firms located in counties neighboring those impacted by natural disasters and find that, on average, these firms increase their ESG disclosure transparency over the period subsequent to the disaster. Given that our sample firms are located outside of the area directly impacted by the disaster, the changes in disclosure transparency after the disaster are consistent with managers increasing their preference for transparency as their risk salience increases. Further, we find that firms with a higher percentage …

Do Esg Funds Deliver On Their Promises?, Quinn Curtis, Jill E. Fisch, Adriana Z. Robertson

All Faculty Scholarship

Corporations have received growing criticism for their role in climate change, perpetuating racial and gender inequality, and other pressing social issues. In response to these concerns, shareholders are increasingly focusing on environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) criteria in selecting investments, and asset managers are responding by offering a growing number of ESG mutual funds. The flow of assets into ESG is one of the most dramatic trends in asset management.

But are these funds giving investors what they promise? This question has attracted the attention of regulators, with the Department of Labor and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) …

Non-Gaap Earnings And Stock Price Crash Risk, Charles Hsu, Rencheng Wang, Benjamin C. Whipple

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We investigate whether non-GAAP earnings disclosures increase stock price crash risk. Consistent with non-GAAP disclosures allowing managers to inflate investors’ perceptions about firm performance, our results indicate that income increasing non-GAAP reporting increases crash risk. We also find that managers can use non-GAAP reporting as a substitute for earnings management to withhold bad news from investors (the traditional explanation for crashes). Finally, we find a positive association between non-GAAP reporting and the likelihood of subsequent events that can trigger a crash. Overall, our evidence is consistent with some non-GAAP disclosures exposing investors to risks of large and sudden price declines.

Terrorist Attacks, Managerial Sentiment, And Corporate Disclosures, Wen Chen, Haibin Wu, Liandong Zhang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This study investigates the effect of managerial sentiment on corporate disclosure decisions. Using terrorist attacks in the United States as adverse shocks to managerial sentiment, we find that firms located in the metropolitan areas attacked issue more negatively biased earnings forecasts. The effect is stronger for firms with higher operating uncertainty and firms with younger, inexperienced, or less confident executives and it is weaker for firms located in states with increasing violent crime rates. A potential alternative explanation is that managers could strategically bias earnings forecasts downward and attribute the poor performance to terrorist attacks. To address this issue, we …

What Are You Saying? Using Topic To Detect Financial Misreporting, Nerissa C. Brown, Richard M. Crowley, W. Brooke Elliott

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We use a machine learning technique to assess whether the thematic content of financial statement disclosures (labeled topic) is incrementally informative in predicting intentional misreporting. Using a Bayesian topic modeling algorithm, we determine and empirically quantify the topic content of a large collection of 10‐K narratives spanning 1994 to 2012. We find that the algorithm produces a valid set of semantically meaningful topics that predict financial misreporting, based on samples of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) enforcement actions (Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases [AAERs]) and irregularities identified from financial restatements and 10‐K filing amendments. Our out‐of‐sample tests indicate that topic …

Consequences Of Disclosing Clinical Trial Results: Evidence From The Food And Drug Administration Amendments Act, Thomas Borveau, Vedran Capkun, Yin Wang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine how the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act (FDAAA) of 2007, which requires additional disclosures regarding clinical trial results, impacts information asymmetry between the disclosing pharmaceutical firm and capital market participants, the general public, academics, and practitioners. We document a reduction in information asymmetry in capital markets. We also document an increase in adverse event and product problem complaint reports filed against the pharmaceutical firms to the FDA and a higher number of drug and medical device recalls for affected firms after the FDAAA enactment. Finally, cross-sectional analyses suggest that the increase in FDA complaint reports and …

(When) Does Transparency Hurt Liquidity?, Karthik Balakrishnan, Aytekin Ertan, Yun Je Lee

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Conventional wisdom suggests that increases in public information improve market liquidity. However, if greater public information incentivizes only sophisticated investors to produce private information, it could exacerbate information asymmetry among investors and thus reduce liquidity. We explore this argument on a sample of mortgage-backed securities (MBSs) by using a recent European regulation that mandates complex disclosures about the individual loans underlying MBSs. We find that the liquidity of the debt tranches of disclosed MBSs declines by 23% post-regulation. Our inferences are stronger when the securities are harder to value and when the disparity in investor sophistication is higher. In contrast …

Factors Influencing Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosures In Nepalese Banks, Gopi Bidari, Hadrian G. Djajadikerta

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Purpose This paper examines the relationship between selected firm-specific variables and the extent of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures made by Nepalese banks. Design/methodology/approach A content analysis approach of the banks' annual reports is applied using a CSR disclosure index based on the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines. The factors identified in this study – bank size, bank age and bank profitability – are analyzed against the extent of CSR disclosures in the Nepalese banks using multiple regression. Findings The main finding from the content analysis indicates that the extent of CSR disclosures made by Nepalese banks in their annual reports …

Private Company Lies, Elizabeth Pollman

All Faculty Scholarship

Rule 10b-5’s antifraud catch-all is one of the most consequential pieces of American administrative law and most highly developed areas of judicially-created federal law. Although the rule broadly prohibits securities fraud in both public and private company stock, the vast majority of jurisprudence, and the voluminous academic literature that accompanies it, has developed through a public company lens.

This Article illuminates how the explosive growth of private markets has left huge portions of U.S. capital markets with relatively light securities fraud scrutiny and enforcement. Some of the largest private companies by valuation grow in an environment of extreme information asymmetry …

Riding The Blockchain Mania: Public Firms’ Speculative 8-K Disclosures, Pengkai Lin

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This paper provides evidence on public firms' initial 8-K disclosures that mention Blockchain and investors' response to these disclosures. We categorize the description of Blockchain activities in firms' 8-Ks as Speculative (e.g., a vague future plan that involves Blockchain) or Existing (e.g., a description of Blockchain product). We document a sharp increase in the number of initial 8-K disclosures of Blockchain, particularly by Speculative firms, coinciding with the rise of Bitcoin prices and excitement in Blockchain technology in the last quarter of 2017. Investors react positively to the Blockchain 8-Ks issued by Speculative firms in the initial seven-day event window …

Disclosure And Reporting Against The Sustainable Development Goals: Connecting New Stakeholders To Sustainability Data, Theresa Heithaus, Richard Mills, Stephanie Perkiss

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

This case study focuses on the disclosures of thirty seven companies and a unique research approach to making their corporate sustainability performance more open, comparable and engaging. A group of 40 students at the University of Wollongong worked in a structured way to aggregate comparable data on corporate sustainability on a selection of metrics related to the SDGs. This report offers an in depth look at one example of the kind of projects that WikiRate and the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) have been running since 2016, involving more than 2,000 students. For this case study, WikiRate staff reviewed …

Advertising And Disclosure: Do Firms Time Advertising During Disclosure Periods?, Yin Wang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Using a large sample of monthly advertising data, I examine whether U.S. firms use advertisingstrategically during disclosure periods. I find that firms schedule some advertising to appeararound their SEC 10-K, 10-Q filings and around their earnings announcements, consistent withadvertising being used to increase visibility and attract investor attention during disclosureperiods. This effect is stronger for firms reporting good news, for firms with high individualinvestor ownership, for firms in the retail industry, and for young firms. In addition, firmsincrease their advertising through media with broad target audiences and through business-toconsumer media around their disclosures (i.e. SEC 10-K, 10-Q filings and earningsannouncements). …

Determinants Of Internet Financial Reporting By Egyptian Companies, Laila Aboutera, Amani Hussein

Business Administration

This research aims at examining the determinants of internet financial reporting by Egyptian companies through

measuring the extent of internet financial reporting (IFR) practices in Egypt and the association between IFR and

the Egyptian listed companies’ characteristics. The research sample consists of 133 Egyptian companies listed on

the Egyptian stock exchange as well as Nile stock exchange. The sample includes only those companies that

disclose financial information on the internet. This research considers; company’s size, profitability, liquidity,

leverage, company’s age, auditor type and ownership structure as the independent variables that might impact

the company’s’ corporate IFR practices. Moreover, a disclosure …

Who Bleeds When The Wolves Bite? A Flesh-And-Blood Perspective On Hedge Fund Activism And Our Strange Corporate Governance System, Leo E. Strine Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

This paper examines the effects of hedge fund activism and so-called wolf pack activity on the ordinary human beings—the human investors—who fund our capital markets but who, as indirect of owners of corporate equity, have only limited direct power to ensure that the capital they contribute is deployed to serve their welfare and in turn the broader social good.

Most human investors in fact depend much more on their labor than on their equity for their wealth and therefore care deeply about whether our corporate governance system creates incentives for corporations to create and sustain jobs for them. And because …

Do Disclosures Of Customer Metrics Lower Investors' And Analysts' Uncertainty But Hurt Firm Performance?, Emanuel Bayer, Kapil R. Tuli, Bernd Skiera

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School of Business

Investors, analysts, and regulators frequently advocate greater disclosure of nonfinancial information, such as customer metrics. Managers, however, argue that such metrics are costly to report, reveal sensitive information to competitors, and therefore will lower future cash flows. To examine these counterarguments, this study presents the first empirical examination of the prevalence and consequences of backward- and forward-looking disclosures of customer metrics by manually coding 511 annual reports of firms in two industries, telecommunications (365 reports) and airlines (146 reports). The results reveal significant heterogeneity in the disclosure of customer metrics across firms and between industries. On average, in both industries, …

Native Advertising: A Close Look At An Emerging Advertising Unit, David Kamerer

School of Communication: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This study is a content analysis of a random sample of in-feed native ads, as curated by the Sharethrough Native Advertising Leaderboard. A native ad is paid content that looks like organic content and is served in the same feed. Native ads can earn premium CPMs for publishers, while giving advertisers a “lean in” format that online readers may actually enjoy. What are these native ads like? They utilized a mixture of assets including text (almost all), photos (an average of five), videos (almost half had one or more), interactive elements (20 percent) and GIFs. Only 75 percent of ads …

Solving Ethical Puzzles To Unlock University Technology Transfer Client Work For An Intellectual Property Legal Clinic, Cynthia L. Dahl

All Faculty Scholarship

Intellectual property (IP) and technology legal clinics are experiencing an unprecedented surge in popularity. Before 2000 there were only five such clinics, but by 2016 there were seventy-four, with fifty added since 2010 alone. As law schools are approving new IP clinics and as practitioners are developing syllabi, there is an increasing need to share knowledge about models that work and how to avoid pitfalls.

One potentially fertile – but traditionally underutilized -- source of client work for an IP and technology clinic is the university technology transfer office (“TTO”), the department that protects, markets, and licenses all university intellectual …

Fair Value Hierarchy Measures: Post-Implementation Evidence On Ifrs 7, Pearl Tan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Using a balance sheet valuation model, this study examines if information on the fair value hierarchy of on-balance sheet financial assets and financial liabilities are incorporated in the market’s valuation of companies’ equities in Singapore. The results of the study show significant associations between as-reported Level 1 and Level 2 fair value measures of financial assets and market values. However, the results are not significant for Level 3 fair value measures of financial assets and each of the three levels of fair value measures of financial liabilities. The results also show that returns are more positively associated with as-reported gains …

Recognition And Disclosure Of Impairment In China, Jing Wang, Keith Hooper

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

This paper aims to examine the extent of goodwill impairment in listed companies of China and the audited disclosure of goodwill. China is an important adopter of International Financial Standards but the question remains that, as a recent adopter, to what extent contentious issues such as goodwill impairment are implemented. The research analyzes the financial and share market information gathered from the top 50 companies listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. The findings reveal that goodwill amortization has been discontinued and replaced by goodwill impairment, but interestingly the Big Four firms seem more likely to recognize a goodwill impairment loss …

Stakeholders' Power, Corporate Characteristics, And Social And Environmental Disclosure: Evidence From China, Yingjun Lu, Indra Abeysekera

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

This paper investigates the influences of stakeholders' power and corporate characteristics on social and environmental disclosure practices of socially responsible Chinese listed firms identified by a social responsibility ranking list. A stakeholder-driven, three-dimensional social and environmental disclosure index including disclosure quantity, disclosure type quality and disclosure item quality, is constructed to assess sample firms' social and environmental disclosures in their two public reports: annual reports and corporate social responsibility reports. Findings indicate that corporate social and environmental disclosures have significant and positive associations with firm size, profitability, and industry classification. The roles of various powerful stakeholders in influencing corporate social …

Signalling External Capital Disclosure In Annual Reports, Indra Abeysekera

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

Much of the discussion of voluntary disclosure of external capital in annual reports entails only limited examination of signals for capital accumulation. Using the method of content analysis, this paper examines practices regarding signalling for disclosure of external capital, the most disclosed category of intellectual capital, in annual reports of a sample of listed firms in Sri Lanka, a developing nation. Eleven case study interviews from the sample firms explore the role of signalling in capital accumulation. Findings reveal that signals differ between industry sectors in convincing stakeholders to advance capital accumulation.

The Relationship Between Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure And Financial Performance: Evidence From Thailand, Wisuttorn Jitaree, Sudhir C. Lodh, Shyam S. Bhati

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

This study examines the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure and financial performance in Thailand during the period 2009-2011. Four measures of financial performance were used based on data extracted from the annual reports of 232 firms listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand. A CSR disclosure index was constructed to measure the extent and dimensions of CSR disclosure. Overall, the results from the empirical analysis provide some evidence of positive relationship between financial performance and CSR disclosure. This study adds further evidence to the literature on the relationship between the CSR and financial performance in an emerging country. …

Price Shocks, News Disclosures, And Asymmetric Drifts, Hai Lu, Kevin Wang, Xiaolu Wang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Motivated by investor disagreement and corporate disclosure literatures, we examinehow stock price shocks affect future stock returns. We find that both large short-termprice drops and hikes are followed by negative abnormal returns over the subsequent year,consistent with the conjecture that price shocks are useful indicators of inter-temporalspikes in investor disagreement and investor opinion converges gradually. The asymmetricdrifts, return continuation for negative price shocks versus return reversal for positive ones,are in sharp contrast to the general findings of symmetric drifts in corporate event studies.Moreover, price shocks associated with public news events are followed by significantlyweaker downward drifts, suggesting that news disclosures …