Corporate Governance and Reporting: An Empirical Study of the Listed Companies in Bangladesh

Abstract:     
Corporate governance is a burning issue now-a-days. In Bangladesh, a number of attempts have been made on part of different governmental and non-governmental institutions for ensuring better corporate governance. Considering the importance of this issue, this paper has tried to examine the actual corporate governance practices in the listed public limited companies by considering 45 disclosure items. A random sample of 155 listed Public Limited Companies (PLCs) has been taken for this purpose. To facilitate the analysis, a Corporate Governance Disclosure Index (CGDI) has been computed and a number of hypotheses have been tested. The mean and standard deviation of CGDI have been found to be 56.04 and 17.20 respectively. In this study, significant difference has been found to exist among the CGDI of various sectors. Financial sector has been found to make more intensive corporate governance disclosure than the non-financial sector. In general, companies have been found to be more active in making financial disclosures rather than non-financial disclosures. Multiple regression result shows that corporate governance disclosure index is significantly influenced (at 5% level of significance) by local ownership, the SEC notification, and the size of the company. Belonging to financial or non-financial institution, age, multinational company, and size of the board of directors are not found to have any significant impact on corporate governance disclosure.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 32

Keywords: Corporate Governance, SEC notification, financial disclosure, multinational company

JEL Classification: G34, M41, M45, M47, G32

Accepted Paper Series