Acta Universitatis Danubius. Œconomica, Vol 9, No 2 (2013)

Abstract

The purpose of our empirical study is to assess the relationship between ownership’ features  and the level of disclosure in case of banking institutions listed on London Stock Exchange, basing on the general statement that disclosure and quality of corporate governance system are two closely related concepts - the higher the level of transparency, the better the quality corporate governance practices.

Irrespective of prior studies, which were focused on specific corporate governance features like board of directors size and independence, CEO duality or various ownership’ features, our study comes to add value to corporate governance literature by testing one attribute of corporate governance attribute – ownership, from various perspectives. Moreover, because the banking system was little explored on this topic before, we had the chance to enrich the research literature with this empirical study, whose disclosure index developed ensures it as well with originality.

The research methodology used for achieving our goal is based on econometric analysis using statistical tools - correlations for identifying the relationships and regressions for assessing them - all of these being performed using SPSS software. In this respect, firstly, we developed a disclosure index made of three sub-indices, one for each type of disclosure: mandatory, recommended and voluntary. The main features considered for assessing ownership were its structure and concentration.

The results of the performed analysis reveal significant positive influences of all features tested on the level of disclosure, thus confirming our assumptions that the higher the quality of ownership, the higher the level of disclosure.