The relationship between the accounting standards and the global financial crisis: empirical analysis of mergers and acquisitions in banking industry

Purpose The purpose of this study is to focus on, namely, the international financial reporting standards (IFRS) or local generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) effects of financial reporting as a corporate governance mechanism on mergers and acquisitions (M&As) for banking institutions during the global financial crisis. Design/methodology/approach I investigate the characteristics of bank financial statements before the start of the global crisis, which helps to explain the relationships between the accounting standards and the global financial crisis. The observations, which are based on 3,178 deals in a sample period, are crucially important for corporate governance and bank performance. The results from our analysis are robust to a wide variety of modifications in our research design and are corroborated by descriptive statistics, one-way ANOVA and a two-sample t -test on a sample of banks that voluntarily adopted IFRS for M&As. Findings The find that IFRS-based monitoring of banks M&As in terms of higher quality financial reporting is negatively linked with bank performance, whereas local GAAP-based monitoring of banks’ M&A is positively associated with accounting performance. Finally, our main results for higher quality financial reporting under local GAAP or IFRS generally hold after controlling for various analyses and relationships between account standards and the financial crisis. Practical implications Financial reporting standards setting a corporate governance mechanism are considered since it was impacted recently during the global financial crisis and became a great matter of concern. Originality/value The value of this paper is determined by an empirical investigation of the relationships between bank performance and accounting and financial reporting standards in the context of the global economy.