The Information Content of Mandatory Risk Factor Disclosures in Corporate Filings PDF Download

Author: John L. Campbell
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 61

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Book Description
Beginning in 2005, the SEC mandated firms to include a “risk factor” section in their Form 10-K to discuss “the most significant factors that make the company speculative or risky.” This suggests that regulators believe that investors benefit from disclosures about firm risk and uncertainties. Critics argue that the disclosures are qualitative and boilerplate, and thus uninformative. In this study, we examine the information content of this newly-created risk factor section and offer two main results. First, we find that firms that face greater risk disclose more risk factors, and that the type of risk that a firm faces (i.e. systematic, idiosyncratic, financial, legal, or tax) determines whether they devote a greater portion of their disclosures towards describing that risk type. In other words, managers provide informative risk factor disclosures. Second, we find that market participants incorporate the information conveyed by risk factor disclosures into their assessments of firm risk and stock price, and that the public availability of the disclosure decreases information asymmetry amongst firms' shareholders. We are the first study to document that when managers increase negative/pessimistic qualitative disclosure, market-based measures of firm risk increase. These results provide further insight into the relationship between disclosure and firm risk, and may inform current policy decisions of the SEC.

Author: Evelyn Korn
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 60

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Author: Tzu-Ting Chiu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This study examines the relation between narrative risk disclosures in mandatory reports and the pricing of credit risk. In particular, we investigate whether and how the SEC mandate of risk factor disclosures (RFDs) affects credit default swap (CDS) spreads. Based on the theory of Duffie and Lando (2001), we predict and find that CDS spreads decrease significantly after RFDs are made available in 10-K/10-Q filings. These results suggest that RFDs improve information transparency about the firm's underlying risk, thereby reducing the information risk premium in CDS spreads. The content analysis further reveals that disclosures pertinent to financial and idiosyncratic risk are especially relevant to credit investors. In cross-sectional analyses, we document that RFDs are more useful for evaluating the business prospects and default risk of firms with greater information uncertainty/asymmetry. Overall, our findings imply that the SEC requirement for adding a risk factor section to periodic reports enhances the transparency of firm risk and facilitates credit investors in evaluating the credit quality of the firm.

Author: Stefania Veltri
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030479218
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
This book focuses on the impact of the disclosure of non-financial risk, which could be seen as the most relevant non-financial information (NFI), in the aftermath of the 2014/95/EU Directive. The author analyses whether the switch from voluntary to mandatory NFI enhance the quality of disclosed NF risk-related information and the usefulness of the risk disclosure for investors. The book focuses specifically on the mandatory disclosure of non-financial (NF) risks as required by the EU Directive for listed Italian companies, investigating both the state of art of its disclosure and its usefulness for investors. In doing so, the book contributes to fill two relevant gaps in risk literature. The first research gap is related to the insufficient investigation of the disclosure of NF risks. Companies mandated to disclose risk-related information focused mainly on financial risks, in spite of the width of the definition of risk, conceived as information about any opportunity, danger, threat, or exposure that has or could impact the company in the future. The second gap is that empirical evidence about the effects of corporate risk disclosures is still limited, and the potential benefits of the disclosure of information on risks have not been fully explored. In particular, the relationship between risk disclosures and firm value is under researched, as the risk literature mainly focuses on the incentives question, related to the motives for which companies decide to disclose. The research in this book focuses on Italy, a country that provides a unique opportunity to examine the impact of mandatory NF risk disclosure on firm market value, being one of the biggest industrial European countries that had not mandatory legislation for NFI disclosure, and also one of the leading countries in voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting at an international level. It has been carried out in the fiscal year 2017, the first year of the application of the mandatory NF disclosure for obliged Italian listed PIEs. The book contributes both to the measurement literature, as it presents a self-constructed quality NF risks and to the value relevance analysis literature, providing evidence of the usefulness of financial and non-financial risk-related disclosures in the Italian context.

Author: Abiodun Isiaka
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 47

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Book Description
The purpose of this paper is to synthesize the current literature on Risk Factor Disclosures (RFDs) and propose a framework for future research. Beginning in 2005, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed changes to the disclosure of risk information in the annual 10-K reports. These changes mandated large firms in the US to disclose risk factors in a specific section of their 10-Ks, referred to as Item 1A. This paper identifies and suggests research questions in four areas to improve usefulness of RFD reporting: RFDs topics and content, RFDs usefulness to investors, RFDs usefulness in contractual settings, and market-wide usefulness of RFDs. This study will be of use to academic research on the usefulness of RFDs and will provide information to the SEC on ways to improved RFDs.

Author: Kunio Ito
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 4431547924
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Despite the globalization of accounting standards occurring through convergence to International Financial Reporting Standards, local accounting systems are deeply intertwined with each country’s unique institutions such as its corporate system, disclosure practices and enforcement mechanisms. First, this book empirically analyzes the effects of globalization and localization of accounting rules on corporate behavior such as earnings management, signaling, investment behavior and dividend payout policy. Second, the book unravels the economic consequences of disclosure based on the concept of self-disciplining enforcement such as management forecasts, environmental disclosures and risk disclosures by Japanese firms. This volume is a step forward in understanding the link between accounting and corporate behavior based on a new institutional accounting approach.

Author: Joshua Filzen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 35

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Book Description
Prior research has documented that the market responds to quarterly updates to annual risk factor disclosures at the time of release, suggesting quarterly risk factor updates provide informational value to investors. In this study, we examine whether future returns are associated with quarterly risk factor updates. We find that firms with quarterly risk factor updates experience lower future returns, relative to firms without updates. Further, we find that firms that shy away from language indicating risk to firm fundamentals in a quarterly risk factor update exhibit the strongest predictability of future returns. This result suggests that the content of an update is related to the completeness of the market reaction at the time the 10-Q is filed. This research is of direct interest to investors and regulators who are currently considering how to improve risk factor disclosure requirements.

Author: Keehea Moon
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 73

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Book Description
The SEC mandates that firms disclose material risk factors in their annual reports and adopts a principles-based approach, which allows managers to exercise discretion in determining which risks are material and the extent to which these risk factors are disclosed. To investigate whether risk factor disclosures reflect what managers consider to be material risks as the SEC intended, I examine manager-specific factors as a determinant of the content of risk factor disclosures. Specifically, I propose that managers have different risk perceptions that affect their assessment of material risks and ultimately the disclosure outcomes. Using a fixed effects approach, I find that individual managers have a significant effect on both the quantity and quality of risk factor disclosures after controlling for time varying firm characteristics, reporting incentives, firm fixed effects, and time fixed effects. Further, I examine managerial overconfidence, a managerial bias that is related to how managers perceive risks, and find that more overconfident managers disclose fewer risk factors and provide lower quality risk factor disclosures. Finally, I find that firms with more overconfident managers are more likely to receive a SEC comment letter on their risk factor disclosures. Overall, my findings suggest that manager-specific factors have a significant influence on the textual content of an important mandatory disclosure.

Author: Margaret Woods
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317507940
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
To date, there has been little consideration of the many different ways in which accounting and risk intersect, despite organisations being more determined than ever to build resilience against potential risks. This comprehensive volume overcomes this gap by providing an overview of the field, drawing together current knowledge of risk in a wide range of different accounting contexts. Key themes such as corporate governance, trust, uncertainty and climate change are covered by a global array of contributing scholars. These contributions are divided into four areas: The broader aspects of risk and risk management Risk in financial reporting Risk in management accounting Risk monitoring The book is supported by a series of illustrative case studies which help to bring together theory and practice. With its wealth of examples and analyses, this volume provides essential reading for students, scholars and practitioners charged with understanding diverse facets of risk in the context of accounting in the business world.

Author: Richard A. Cazier
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 69

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Book Description
Although formal guidance instructs firms to avoid issuing lengthy and boilerplate risk factor disclosures, regulators and users of financial statements note these disclosures continue to be excessively long and boilerplate. The persistence of these characteristics is particularly surprising given that prior research finds firms disclosing lengthy and boilerplate risk factors experience negative capital market consequences. We investigate two potential sources of firms' incentives to issue such disclosures by examining how judicial and regulatory assessments of firms' risk factor disclosures correlate with measures of disclosure length and disclosure boilerplate. Our results suggest that lengthier and more boilerplate risk factor disclosures are less likely to be considered inadequate under judicial and regulatory review. Specifically, risk factors that are lengthier and less specific are less likely to be found inadequate by judges in shareholder securities lawsuits. In addition, more standardized risk factor disclosures are less likely to be targeted by an SEC comment letter during the SEC's filing review process. Further analysis finds that when risk factor language is assessed as adequate in judicial review, industry peers borrow that language more frequently. Finally, we find that judicial assessments of risk factor disclosures prompt industry peers to lengthen their own risk factor disclosures regardless of whether the risk disclosure was deemed adequate or not.