Title: Corporate financial reporting in Qatar: a study of individual investors' assessment of annual reports

Authors: Idris Al-Maliki; Helmi Hammami; Ghassan H. Mardini

Addresses: Qatar University, P.O. Box: 2713, Doha, Qatar ' ESC Rennes School of Business, 02 Rue Robert d'Arbrissel – 35065 Rennes Cedex, France ' College of Business and Economics, Qatar University, P.O. Box: 2713, Doha, Qatar

Abstract: In this paper, an attempt is made to investigate a particular group of investors - namely individual investors' perceptions of corporate annual reports in Qatar. A total of 400 surveys were distributed to individual investors based in Qatar. Surveys were distributed over a period of two months. The response rate was 89% (356 returned surveys), with 313 usable questionnaires (78.25%). Findings show that annual reports represent a very important source of information for investors. Almost 67% of the respondents see annual reports as a very important source of information to assess company's performance and for investment decisions. Compared to other company's sources of information annual reports rank first. Similar to Al-Attar and Al-Khater (2008), investors rank the set of financial statements on the top. The balance sheet is ranked first. Income statement and cash flow statement are also important and ranked receptively third and second. Auditor's report comes in the fourth position. The results of this study comfort well the idea that the financial reporting environment in Qatar is evolving at the image of the country.

Keywords: annual reports; disclosure; investor perceptions; emerging markets; Qatar; corporate financial reporting; investor assessment; individual investors; firm performance; investment decisions; company information; financial statements; balance sheet; income statements; cash flow statements; auditor reports.

DOI: 10.1504/MEJM.2015.069016

Middle East Journal of Management, 2015 Vol.2 No.1, pp.79 - 96

Received: 06 Oct 2014
Accepted: 10 Oct 2014
Published online: 24 Apr 2015 *

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