Earnings Management and Investor Protection: An International Comparison

The word governance comes from a Latin word – gubernare – which means to steer. Cicero has written ‘he that governs sits quietly at the stern and scarce is seen to stir’. Thus my colleague, Dr Collette Kirwan, has conceptualised the board as being the navigator of the company.

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What is Corporate Governance

Going beyond the mere gender diversity in the boardroom, this systematic review comprehensively covers the research on board diversity of financial institutions. More specifically, we cover gender diversity, as well as other characteristics of diversity, such as nationality, age, tenure, experience, education, ethnicity, and religion. A systematic literature review was employed using Scopus and Web of Science databases, covering all publications until May 2020, which resulted in 91 studies from 66 top-ranked journals in accounting, finance, and economic fields. We analyze them based on the journal, methodology, research construct questions, and theoretical perspectives. Our results highlight the substantial knowledge gaps and the inconsistent findings of prior studies on several aspects of the field, suggesting avenues for further studies in terms of research designs, settings, scope, and theories. We argue that there is a need to explore other board diversity attributes rather than focusing on the gender diversity of the boards of financial institutions to achieve sustainable development. Also, more work is outlined on topics related to board diversity of financial firms that receive limited attention from scholars, such as (but not limited to) environmental performance, capital structure, intellectual capital, innovation and earnings quality of financial institutions, as well as the indirect effect of policy settings.

Nudging toward diversity in the boardroom: A systematic literature review of board diversity of financial institutions

Handbook of Islamic Banking

We examine the relation between industry specialist auditors and cost of debt financing using a national and city level industry specialist framework. Consistent with the assumption that higher audit quality is associated with lower information risk, which benefits clients in raising debt capital, we find that firms audited by city level industry specialist auditors, either alone or jointly with national level industry specialist auditors, enjoy significantly lower cost of debt financing measured by both credit rating and bond spread. Our results suggest that, compared to clients of non-industry-specialists, firms’ odds of worse credit ratings are 0.859 (0.664) times lower, and their bond spreads are 17 (16) basis points lower if they are clients of city level only (joint national and city level) industry specialists. In addition, our evidence shows that, for joint national and city level industry specialists, both information and insurance roles are significant to reduce cost of debt financing.

National Level, City Level Auditor Industry Specialization and Cost of Debt

This paper aims to examine the impact of Shari’ah supervisory boards (SSBs) on the performance of Islamic banks (IBs). It also tests whether SSBs’ attributes affect the performance of IBs. Based on a sample of 1,803 Islamic bank-year observations from 82 banks in 15 countries over the period 1993-2014 and controlling for factors known to affect bank performance, this study reveals a robust and significant positive relationship between SSBs and Islamic bank performance. This study also shows that the characteristics of SSBs affect the performance of IBs. This research reveals how SSBs influence the performance of IBs, as well as the processes and roles SSBs use to ensure Shari’ah compliance in business transactions.,The purpose of this study design is to relate SSB presence, size and diversity to financial performance using three techniques. The first technique is a multivariate data analysis that analyzes data arising from more than one variable. The second technique is a clustered regression (clustering by bank), which corrects for serial correlation and produces unbiased t-statistics. Because this sample is drawn from panel data, it is expected serial autocorrelation of the independent variables and error term within banks. In cases where within-company correlation exists, t-statistics based on average regression coefficients from year-by-year regression are upwardly biased and potentially severe (Peterson, 2009). Therefore, this study uses a technique that agrees with Stock and Watson (2002), who show that the standard method of calculating heteroskedasticity-robust standard errors for the fixed-effects estimator generates inconsistent variance estimates. Thus, using the clustered regression is consistent with the fixed-effects estimator. The third technique is a two-stage least-squares regression that helps build an instrumental variable for robustness tests purposes.,The findings suggest that large corporate boards and large SSBs are more efficient in dealing with different monitoring and advisory roles than small SSBs. Consequently, this suggests that increasing the size of corporate boards and SSBs should improve monitoring and advisory functions, management behavior and organizational performance.,It is possible that there is an upper limit to this benefit, however; we do not explore this limit, which therefore provides opportunities for additional research. Because Shari’ah compliance relates only to a rational legal framework of negative screening relegated to interest prohibition and limiting uncertainty. The interest prohibition and limiting uncertainty have not been investigated between the two samples due to data unavailability. In addition, limited accounting-based measures of financial performance may not accurately portray IB performance; hence, an additional market measure is implemented, which is Tobin’s Q.,Ultimately, these findings could help IBs improve their financial results by enhancing their internal and external governance mechanisms (Walsh and Seward, 1990). They provide a basis for developing larger, more diverse SSBs that are more focused on complying with Shari’ah and corporate governance. The results also have significant policy implications for improving firm-level corporate governance versus improving country-level institutional factors. Both views have their advocates. However, it is very difficult to reform the legal system in a short time. Still, this study shows that struggling IBs have a way to improve their corporate governance and simultaneously improve their financing environment.,This research contributes to the literature on the effects of SSBs on IBs’ organizational financial performance, processes and roles. It is the first to examine empirically the underpinnings of how SSBs affect organizational financial performance via agency theory and contingency theory.

Corporate governance: evidence from Islamic banks

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the relation between a company's bid‐ask spread, a proxy for information asymmetry, and auditor tenure and specialization.Design/methodology/approach – The tests use clustered regression for a sample of 31,689 company‐years from 1992 to 2001 and control for factors known to impact bid‐ask spread in cross‐section.Findings – The findings suggest that the market's perception of disclosure quality is higher and private information search opportunities are fewer for companies engaging industry specialist auditors. In addition, the paper finds that information asymmetry has a U‐shaped relation to auditor tenure. This U‐shaped relation holds for both specialists and non‐specialists; however, the bid‐ask spread for specialists tends to fall below that of non‐specialists at all tenure intervals.Research limitations/implications – The findings may directly result from auditor tenure and specialization or it may be that those auditor‐related characteristics are a sub...

Auditor tenure, auditor specialization, and information asymmetry

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether banks’ management behavior is related to corporate ethics. We employ earnings-management and expense-preference measures to evaluate management behavior. Using a very large sample of banks from 15 countries and controlling for a number of bank- and country-level factors, we find that managers in Islamic banks are less likely to engage in unethical business practices compared to those in commercial banks. We also document that Shari’ah supervisory boards embedded in Islamic banks affect and shape managerial behavior and mitigate agency problems. These results establish a link between corporate ethics and management behavior through Shari’ah and Shari’ah supervisory boards.

Corporate ethics: evidence from Islamic banks

Correspondence Majdi A. Quttainah, Department of Management and Marketing, College of Business Administration, University of Kuwait, P.O. Box 5486, Safat 13055, Kuwait. Email: majdi.quttainah@ku.edu.kw Abstract We examine whether Islamic banks are more likely to be conservative in their financial reporting than conventional banks, as well as how Islamic banks' unique corporate governance system affects accounting conservatism behaviors. Using a large sample of Islamic banks and their matched non-Islamic banks; based on total assets and geographic location, in 15 countries, we find Islamic banks are more likely to deploy accounting conservatism as measured by loss avoidance, abnormal loan loss provisions, and C-score, respectively. Islamic banks are about 95% more likely to be more conservative in accounting practices than their counterparts, depending on different model specifications. In addition, we report several board characteristics, such as size, independence, reputation, tenure, and diversity, are important determinants of accounting conservatism in Islamic banks. This relationship indicates certain board traits lead to greater monitoring roles, consequently reducing unethical behavior and increasing the degree of conservatism in accounting practices.

Corporate governance and accounting conservatism in Islamic banks

This paper examines the association between the employment of industry specialist auditors and the cost of debt of a client company. Unlike auditors without industry expertise, auditors with industry expertise can better improve the credibility of financial statements (Krishnan 2003; Balsam et al. 2003) and verify management's forecasts, thereby minimizing managements' discretion in applying accounting principles and standards (Kwon 1996). This suggests that industry specialist auditors can enhance audit quality. Consequently, clients of industry specialist auditors are expected to achieve more significant economic benefits than clients of nonspecialist auditors. It is hypothesized in this study that clients of industry specialist auditors are more likely to enjoy a lower cost of debt than clients of nonindustry specialist auditors. In addition, this study hypothesizes that the marginal economic value added by auditor industry specialization varies between financially troubled clients and financially healthy clients that seek external financing. The results indicate that clients hiring specialists enjoy better credit rating and lower cost of debt than clients of nonspecialists, and this economic value is more significant for risky firms than for healthy firms. However, these findings do not hold for each proxy of auditor industry specialization.

Ali R. Almutairi

Papers

Corporate governance: evidence from Islamic banks

Auditor tenure, auditor specialization, and information asymmetry

Corporate ethics: evidence from Islamic banks

Corporate governance and accounting conservatism in Islamic banks

Does Auditor Industry Specialization Matter? Evidence from the Bond Market