Corporate governance and voluntary risk and forward-looking disclosures

Purpose: We examine the impact of corporate governance on risk and forward-looking disclosures in Qatar.

Design: We automatically measure levels of risk and forward-looking disclosures in the annual reports of Qatari firms for the period 2008-2014. We also use two ways clustered error pooled panel regressions to examine the determinants of these disclosures.

Findings: We find that firms with a higher percentage of foreign ownership disclose more forward-looking information; conversely, board size has a negative impact on the forward-looking disclosure. Financial firms tend to disclose less forward-looking information, however, they tend to disclose more forward-looking information after the 2008 global financial crisis. We also find negative relationships between the risk disclosure and both the number of non-executive members of the board of directors and duality role of the CEO.

Research implications: Our findings should help the users of corporate annual reports in Qatar to understand managerial incentives for reporting risk and forward-looking information. This should help regulators to set a proper set of disclosure rules. Moreover, this study increases our understanding of the behavior of international investors and the board characteristics (i.e. board size) in motivating risk and forward-looking disclosures in Qatari firms.

Originality: We provide the original empirical evidence on the impact of corporate ownership and board characteristics on risk and forward-looking disclosures for Qatari firms using two ways clustered error pooled panel regressions.