Competition, corporate governance, ownership structure and risk reporting

Purpose – This study aims to measure the extent of mandatory and voluntary risk reporting and investigate the impact of competition, corporate governance and ownership structure on risk reporting practices in annual reports of Egyptian companies. Design/methodology/approach – A number of theoretical perspectives including proprietary cost, agency theory, stakeholder theory, political cost, signalling theory and legitimacy theory are used to derive research hypotheses and identify the potential determinants of risk reporting practices in the annual reports of Egyptian companies. The annual reports of 105 listed companies for 2007 were examined to measure the extent of risk reporting and examine potential determinants of risk reporting. An unweighted disclosure index, based on Egyptian Accounting Standards (EAS) 25, has been used to measure the level of mandatory risk reporting while content analysis – sentence approach – is used in coding voluntary risk reporting. Multiple regression analysis is used in evaluating the relationships between competition, corporate governance, ownership structure and risk reporting. Findings – The results indicate a low level of compliance with mandatory risk reporting requirements. A low extent of voluntary risk reporting with a tendency to report more backward-looking and qualitative risk disclosure compared to forward-looking and quantitative risk disclosure is indicated. Agency theory and proprietary cost provide explanations for the variation of risk reporting in corporate annual reports. It is suggested that competition, role duality, board size, ownership concentration and auditor type are key determinants of risk reporting practices in Egypt. Research limitations/implications – The scoring and classification process suffers from inherent judgment limitations and subjectivity, which cannot be entirely eradicated. The study applies a cross-sectional approach and examines risk reporting practice and its determinants at one point in time. However, longitudinal research may provide a better understanding of risk reporting practices of Egyptian companies. The use of only one proxy of competition is one of the limitations of this study. Practical implications – The findings regarding mandatory disclosure level and nature of voluntary risk disclosure should be on concern to regulatory authorities and standard-setters. Originality/value – The study aims to contribute to risk reporting research through addressing not only mandatory but also voluntary risk reporting in emerging economies in general and Egypt in particular. In addition, examining the impact of competition on risk reporting is a main contribution of this study.