Authors: Stergios Athianos, Augustinos Dimitras

Title: MANDATORY DISCLOSURE REQUIREMENTS ACCORDING TO IAS 24 AND COMPLIANCE

Abstract

Disclosure of financial statements is an important topic both for investors and for preparers as disclosure allows investors to understand the application of the accounting principles used by companies. This research examines financial statements under IFRS of 50 Greek listed groups and their compliance with mandatory disclosure according to IAS 24 and presents an empirical analysis of the Greek market which belongs to the Continental European accounting cluster (French – German accounting system). The examination period span from 2009 to 2015. Different variables were tested to analyze the compliance with the mandatory disclosure such as size variables, performance variables, financial interest variables and market variables. Many studies on mandatory disclosure are based on one disclosure index method and results are affected by the different approaches used: Cooke's dichotomous approach, Partial Compliance method, weighted and unweighted. In this paper, the decision was taken to implement the harmonization index, introduced by Van der Tas as a depended variable of the proposed model. Results show that all independed variables significantly affect the disclosure index. More specific, financial cost and size of the company affect significantly for a p-value<1%   a result that indicates the crucial role of banking system during Greek financial crises.