Compliance with pension-related mandatory disclosures and debt financing

Almaghrabi, K. S., Opong, K. and Tsalavoutas, I. (2021) Compliance with pension-related mandatory disclosures and debt financing. Journal of Business Finance and Accounting, 48(1-2), pp. 148-184. (doi: 10.1111/jbfa.12479)

Abstract

Using hand‐collected data on the level of pension‐related mandatory disclosures required by International Accounting Standard 19 Employee Benefits , we test whether compliance levels with these disclosures convey information that affects firms’ access to the public instead of the private debt market, as well as the cost of their new debt issues. We document a higher tendency to access the public debt market for firms with higher levels of pension‐related disclosure. Furthermore, we find that firms with higher levels of pension‐related disclosure enjoy a lower cost in terms of issuance of public debt, but not a lower cost for private debt issues. Thus, the benefits of disclosure in reducing information risk are only realisable when creditors rely heavily on financial statements in their decision making, due to the limited access to private information. Additional tests reveal that high compliance levels effectively mitigate the negative effect of pension deficits on the cost of public debt. These findings provide novel evidence in the extant literature on the role of mandatory (and, in particular, pension‐related) disclosures on firms’ debt financing. They also have important policy implications.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Tsalavoutas, Professor Yannis and Opong, Professor Kwaku and Almaghrabi, Khadija
• Authors: Almaghrabi, K. S., Opong, K., and Tsalavoutas, I.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > Adam Smith Business School > Accounting and Finance
• Journal Name: Journal of Business Finance and Accounting
• Publisher: Wiley
• ISSN: 0306-686X
• ISSN (Online): 1468-5957
• Published Online: 14 July 2020

Copyright Holders

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<fragment>Copyright © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd</fragment>
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• First Published: First published in 48(1-2): 148-184
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy