Title: Corporate governance and risk disclosure: evidence from Saudi Arabia

Authors: Awad Ibrahim; Murya Habbash; Khaled Hussainey

Addresses: Portsmouth Business School, University of Portsmouth, Portland St, Portsmouth, UK ' King Khalid University, Guraiger, Abha 62529, Saudi Arabia ' Portsmouth Business School, University of Portsmouth, Portland St, Portsmouth, UK

Abstract: This study investigates the influence of corporate governance on risk disclosure level, in Saudi Arabia. We examine 408 annual reports of Saudi non-financial-listed firms during 2012-2015. The results show that CEO-Chairperson separation, audit committee effectiveness, state ownership, firm complexity, size and profitability positively affect risk disclosure, while we find no significant correlations for board independence, institutional ownership, auditor type, leverage, and firm age. The study is important because it fills gaps in the disclosure literature, especially in developing and Arab countries, and responds to calls in previous studies, such as Dobler et al. (2011), Ntim et al. (2013) and Moumen et al. (2015), that recommend investigating the corporate governance determinants of risk disclosure in these contexts. The results are of interest to accounting setters and governance regulators. The study also provides an evaluation of the Saudi governance code formally applied in 2007.

Keywords: risk disclosure; corporate governance; ownership structure; content analysis; Saudi Arabia.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAAPE.2019.096748

International Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Performance Evaluation, 2019 Vol.15 No.1, pp.89 - 111

Received: 22 Mar 2017
Accepted: 02 Apr 2018
Published online: 10 Dec 2018 *

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