Proprietary costs, governance and the segment disclosure decision

This version of the article has been accepted for publication, after peer review (when applicable) and is subject to Springer Nature’s AM terms of use, but is not the Version of Record and does not reflect post-acceptance improvements, or any corrections. The Version of Record is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10997-012-9243-4Focusing on the Spanish setting, characterized by high ownership concentration and a regulatory framework that traditionally has given more priority to the avoidance of proprietary and competition costs related to disclosure than to promoting transparency, this paper aims to identify the main factors influencing the segment reporting decision. In particular, we aim to test whether the strength of concentrated ownership structures together with the persistence of the pre-IAS reporting philosophy offsets the role of independent directors. If this is the case, it would be in spite of the new IAS/IFRS reporting standards based on relevance and transparency, and would also run counter to the improvements in the Spanish governance framework which strengthens the presence of independent non-executive directors. The empirical evidence suggests that, under the new IAS/IFRS reporting philosophy, proprietary costs may have lost relevance due to the introduction of mandatory segment information requirements. In addition, within an institutional context of high ownership concentration, independent directors play a significant role in raising the level of reported information. The context of the new IFRS 8 offers opportunities to observe how governance and proprietary costs affect the new 'management approach' to segment classification. © 2012 Springer Science+Business Media New Yor

Dividend policy dispute in a context of concessionaire companies: the role of accounting in the case of Spanish Railway Companies (1920–1930)

This is an Accepted Manuscript version of the following article, accepted for publication in Accounting and Business Research (2023). It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any wayWe study dividend payments and earnings management in railway companies in the first decades of the twentieth century. We argue that the historical organization of the Spanish railway industry as a complex net of 99-year concessionary contracts created predictable incentives for earnings management and rent extraction. The countdown to concessions reversals pressured the State, as residual owner, to subsidize the industry during the 1920s. The State granted two types of public aid to railway companies: to finance increases in wages, and to modernize railway material and infrastructure. We provide novel evidence on the regulation of these aids, their accounting, and their association with dividend payments. Overall, our evidence suggests that despite efforts from the State to establish maximum levels of earnings to report and of ‘permitted’ dividends, the reversal of concessionary contracts gave rise to a principal-principal agency conflict that trapped both the industry and the State and resulted in maximum dividends and equity depletionThe authors acknowledge financial assistance from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (ECO2016-77579 and PID2019-111143GB), and CAM (H2015/HUM-3353, V PRICIT-EPUC3M12