La communication volontaire d'information par les entreprises en difficulté financière

Notre recherche examine l'étendue de la communication d'information de 59 sociétés américaines éprouvant des difficultés financières entre 2001 et 2003. La détresse financière, et éventuellement la faillite, offre un contexte intéressant pour l'étude des motivations des dirigeants à communiquer leur information privée aux investisseurs externes. Nous utilisons la grille d'analyse de Botosan (1997) pour mesurer l'étendue de la divulgation volontaire d'information dans le rapport annuel. Nos résultats documentent que le niveau global de diffusion d'information ne diffère pas entre l'échantillon d'entreprises en détresse financière et celui d'un groupe de contrôle d'entreprises financièrement saines. Toutefois, l'analyse des sous-catégories de l'indice de communication de l'information montre que les entreprises en difficulté financière divulguent davantage d'information dans le rapport d'analyse et de discussion de la direction relativement à leurs perspectives futures.communication volontaire d'information; détresse financière; rapport annuel

LA GESTION DES RESULTATS COMPTABLES LORS DES FUSIONS ET ACQUISITIONS: UNE ANALYSE DANS LE CONTEXTE SUISSE

Cette recherche examine la gestion des résultats comptables par les dirigeants d'entreprises sujettes à des offres publiques d'achat (OPA) dans le contexte Suisse. La recherche comptable suggère que les transactions de fusions et acquisitions offrent un cadre propice à la gestion des résultats tant pour les dirigeants de l'entreprise cible que pour ceux de l'acquéreur (Easterwood, 1998 ; Erickson et Wang, 1999 ; North et O'Connell, 2002). Toutefois, les études empiriques relatives à cette question obtiennent des résultats divergents, et proviennent en outre essentiellement d'études menées dans le contexte américain. Notre recherche se propose d'enrichir la littérature comptable à travers l'analyse de la manipulation des résultats comptables par les firmes cibles d'OPA dans un contexte Européen. Dans cette perspective, la Suisse offre un cadre intéressant en raison des caractéristiques de son marché des prises de contrôle et de la flexibilité offerte aux dirigeants dans le choix des pratiques comptables comparativement à d'autres pays. Sur un échantillon de 50 sociétés suisses cibles d'OPA entre 1990 et 2002, nos résultats documentent une gestion significative des résultats comptables (mesurée par le niveau des accruals discrétionnaires) au cours de l'année qui précède celle de l'initiation de la transaction.Gestion des résultats ; fusions et acquisitions d'entreprises ; comptabilité internationale

Corporate Social Responsibility And The Quality Of Executive Compensation Disclosures

This paper examines the relationship between corporate social responsibility and executive compensation disclosure quality. We test whether socially responsible firms disclose more transparent and detailed information about their executive compensation packages than firms that are less committed to social responsibility initiatives. Using a sample of 187 publicly listed Canadian firms, we find a positive relation between CSR and executive compensation disclosure quality. We also document a positive (negative) association between firm size (ownership concentration) and executive compensation disclosure. These findings support the conclusion that increased disclosure transparency reflects a company’s social engagement towards its stakeholders

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

The evolving SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in Africa: Insights from rapidly expanding genomic surveillance

INTRODUCTION Investment in Africa over the past year with regard to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) sequencing has led to a massive increase in the number of sequences, which, to date, exceeds 100,000 sequences generated to track the pandemic on the continent. These sequences have profoundly affected how public health officials in Africa have navigated the COVID-19 pandemic. RATIONALE We demonstrate how the first 100,000 SARS-CoV-2 sequences from Africa have helped monitor the epidemic on the continent, how genomic surveillance expanded over the course of the pandemic, and how we adapted our sequencing methods to deal with an evolving virus. Finally, we also examine how viral lineages have spread across the continent in a phylogeographic framework to gain insights into the underlying temporal and spatial transmission dynamics for several variants of concern (VOCs). RESULTS Our results indicate that the number of countries in Africa that can sequence the virus within their own borders is growing and that this is coupled with a shorter turnaround time from the time of sampling to sequence submission. Ongoing evolution necessitated the continual updating of primer sets, and, as a result, eight primer sets were designed in tandem with viral evolution and used to ensure effective sequencing of the virus. The pandemic unfolded through multiple waves of infection that were each driven by distinct genetic lineages, with B.1-like ancestral strains associated with the first pandemic wave of infections in 2020. Successive waves on the continent were fueled by different VOCs, with Alpha and Beta cocirculating in distinct spatial patterns during the second wave and Delta and Omicron affecting the whole continent during the third and fourth waves, respectively. Phylogeographic reconstruction points toward distinct differences in viral importation and exportation patterns associated with the Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Omicron variants and subvariants, when considering both Africa versus the rest of the world and viral dissemination within the continent. Our epidemiological and phylogenetic inferences therefore underscore the heterogeneous nature of the pandemic on the continent and highlight key insights and challenges, for instance, recognizing the limitations of low testing proportions. We also highlight the early warning capacity that genomic surveillance in Africa has had for the rest of the world with the detection of new lineages and variants, the most recent being the characterization of various Omicron subvariants. CONCLUSION Sustained investment for diagnostics and genomic surveillance in Africa is needed as the virus continues to evolve. This is important not only to help combat SARS-CoV-2 on the continent but also because it can be used as a platform to help address the many emerging and reemerging infectious disease threats in Africa. In particular, capacity building for local sequencing within countries or within the continent should be prioritized because this is generally associated with shorter turnaround times, providing the most benefit to local public health authorities tasked with pandemic response and mitigation and allowing for the fastest reaction to localized outbreaks. These investments are crucial for pandemic preparedness and response and will serve the health of the continent well into the 21st century

Voluntary disclosure of intangibles and analysts’ earnings forecasts and recommendations

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between voluntary disclosure of intangibles and financial analysts’ earnings forecasts properties. Design/methodology/approach – Disclosures about intangible assets were hand-collected through content analysis of annual reports of a sample of U.S. non-financial firms, while analysts’ earnings forecasts properties were collected from Bloomberg Professional database. We relied on correlation and multivariate regression analyses to test our research hypotheses. Findings – The results show that increased intangible disclosures affect analysts’ earnings forecasts accuracy, dispersion, and favourable consensus recommendations. However, this effect varies according to the nature of intangible assets. Practical implications – Our results may be of interest to different market participants such as corporate managers, financial analysts, and standards setting bodies that recently published guidelines on voluntary disclosure of intangibles. Originality/value – This study develops a new comprehensive index to measure the content of narrative disclosures about a large number of intangibles, such as human, structural, and relational assets. Our findings contribute to the current debate on the value-relevance of narrative disclosures on intangibles to investors and financial analysts. Keywords Intangibles, disclosure, financial analysts, forecast error, forecast dispersion, consensus recommendation Paper type Research pape

Board Gender Diversity and Corporate Response to Sustainability Initiatives: Evidence from the Carbon Disclosure Project

This paper investigates the effect of female representation on the board of directors on corporate response to stakeholders\u27 demands for increased public reporting about climate change-related risks. We rely on the Carbon Disclosure Project as a sustainability initiative supported by institutional investors. Greenhouse gas emissions measurement and its disclosure to investors can be thought of as a first step toward addressing climate change issues and reducing the firm\u27s carbon footprint. Based on a sample of publicly listed Canadian firms over the period 2008-2014, we find that the likelihood of voluntary climate change disclosure increases with women percentage on boards. We also find evidence that supports critical mass theory with regard to board gender diversity. These findings reinfo rce initiatives being undertaken around the world to promote gender diversity in corporate governance while demonstrating board effectiveness in stakeholder management