Understanding the small business sector

The Conditional CAPM Does Not Explain Asset-Pricing Anomalies

This paper studies the determinants of income smoothing by management of loan-loss provisions in banks around the world. Using a panel database of 3221 bank-year observations from 40 countries and controlling for unobservable bank effects and for the endogeneity of explanatory variables, we find that bank income smoothing depends on investor protection, disclosure, regulation and supervision, financial structure, and financial development. Results suggest there is less bank income smoothing not only with the strength of investor protection, but also with the extent of accounting disclosure, restrictions on bank activities, and official and private supervision, while there is more income smoothing with market orientation and development of a country's financial system.

Cross-country determinants of bank income smoothing by managing loan loss provisions

Have Financial Statements Lost Their Relevance

The maturity structure of corporate debt

Purpose – This paper aims to understand the current governance practices and governance structure of Islamic banks (IBs) in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and Southeast Asia countries with the purpose of providing relevant information in guiding the future development of the governance system for IBs. As well, the paper discusses and compares the state of the governance system in GCC countries (Kuwait, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia) and Southeast Asia countries (Malaysia and Indonesia). Design/methodology/approach – The study utilizes descriptive analysis approach in extracting and analyzing data collected for 83 IBs observed for the period 2002-2011. The authors test for differences in means and medians of corporate governance attributes between a sample of IBs in GCC countries and another one for Southeast Asia countries. They use selected variables of corporate governance of different governance structures, namely, the ownership structure, the board of directors, the Shariah boa...

Corporate governance of Islamic banks

This study aims to investigate the extent and trends of voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure and to analyze the determinants of the listed banks’ annual reports and websites in an emergent capital market, namely, Tunisia.,The authors examine the level of CSR disclosure by means of a manual content analysis where the sentence is used as the unit of the analysis. They use Branco and Rodrigues’ (2006 and 2008) index which includes 23 items. They focus on the annual reports of 11 Tunisian listed banks during the period from 2007 to 2012 and the information presented on their websites in December 2013. They use, also, regression analysis to identify the determinants of CSR disclosure used by Tunisian listed banks.,The results of the investigation show that Tunisian listed banks disclose CSR information primarily in a narrative form. Human resources are the main focus in the annual reports, whereas, on the websites, community involvement is the most widespread theme. With regard to the determinants, it appears that bank age, financial performance and state shareholding are the main factors that impact CSR disclosure in the Tunisian listed banks’ annual reports. Furthermore, this study finds a positive (negative) relationship between leverage (financial performance) and CSR disclosure in the banks’ websites. In this regard, the results show different determinants of CSR disclosure for the two supports. Moreover, bank size, foreign shareholding and the type of auditor are unrelated to the listed banks’ CSR disclosure either in their annual reports or on their websites.,The sample size is small; however, it consists of all the relevant Tunisian banks. Also, this study is subject to the limitations of using manual content analysis.,This study enables highlights the importance of CSR disclosure and its determinants for the Tunisian banks’ stakeholders (such as regulators, investors and managers).,The authors contribute to the scarce literature on CSR disclosure in financial institutions. It is the first study to investigate Tunisian listed banks’ CSR disclosure. It is a first attempt to show, also, how banks’ characteristics and banks’ ownership structures impact on their CSR disclosure in their annual reports and on their websites.

Determinants of CSR disclosure of Tunisian listed banks: a multi-support analysis

International Corporate Governance and Finance: Legal, Cultural and Political Explanations☆

Islamic banks are particular financial institutions which generate distinct corporate governance challenges. This study compares the corporate governance attributes between Islamic and conventional banks in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and in Southeast Asian countries. Moreover, this paper studies the impact of relevant corporate governance variables on the Islamic banks’ performance. The sample included 77 large Islamic banks and 85 conventional banks observed over the period 2000–2009. Our findings revealed that there were several divergences between the corporate governance characteristics of Islamic banks and those of conventional banks. These differences originated mainly from the ethical aspects dominating the activities of Islamic banks and the regulatory environment in which they operate. Moreover, we found that board fee, CEO duality and CEO age had a significantly positive effect on the Islamic banks’ performance. However, the Shariah board characteristics seemed to be a value creator for Islamic banks.

Is corporate governance different for Islamic banks? A comparative analysis between the Gulf Cooperation Council and Southeast Asian countries

The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the interactions between the external and internal mechanisms of governance and voluntary disclosure in the annual reports (external mechanism of governance) in the Tunisian emerging market. Our investigation is specifically about the study of the direct links between the regulatory reform, competition on the market of goods and services, ownershi p structure, composition of the board of directors, and the extents of voluntary disclosure in the annual reports either closely linked to mandatory disclosure or not. We conducted our statistical analysis on a sample of Tunisian listed firms of the non -financial sector of 144 observations (firm-years) during the period 2003 -2008. The results of this study show that the firms of our sample tend to disclose voluntary information closely linked to mandatory disclosure rather the one not closely linked. Moreov er, the results provide a strong support that both indexes of voluntary disclosure (closely linked to mandatory disclosure and the one not closely linked) are affected by the external and internal mechanisms of governance. Specifically, governance mechanis ms sometimes represent substitutes and sometimes complements to both measures of the voluntary disclosure extents. Nevertheless, we find that the impacts of the institutional and managerial ownership on the extent of both the voluntary disclosure not close ly linked to mandatory disclosure and the one closely linked are similar. However, the effects of the other variables are different either in significance, in sign, or in magnitude. Voluntary disclosure, mandatory disclosure, annual reports, external mechanisms of governance, internal mechanisms of governance

Hamadi Matoussi

Papers

Corporate governance of Islamic banks

Determinants of CSR disclosure of Tunisian listed banks: a multi-support analysis

International Corporate Governance and Finance: Legal, Cultural and Political Explanations☆

Is corporate governance different for Islamic banks? A comparative analysis between the Gulf Cooperation Council and Southeast Asian countries

Determinants of the extent of voluntary disclos ure in the annual reports of the tunis ian firms