Corporate Governance and IFRS in the Middle East

Book excerpt: The rapid globalization of capital markets has increased attention toward examining the quality of the disclosure practices implemented by companies, as internationalization and globalization are the most important motives of the harmonization of financial statements preparation and presentation. Given the expansion of trade and the openness to foreign capital markets, investment decisions became not limited only for local users, but also international users may need to access the financial information. The issuance of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) to be used throughout the world aims to improve the comparability and understandability of financial statements, and hence, to enhance investment decisions through helping investors across the borders to invest in multinational companies. Although fluid and under-developed institutional arrangements remain central features of emerging markets, ensuring effective corporate governance mechanisms would indeed support companies in complying with IFRS – the latter imposes a challenge for companies operating in emerging markets. This book evaluates the differences in the level of compliance with IFRS across the GCC states, exploring the impact of corporate governance on the level of compliance with IFRS and presenting an empirical analysis of companies across the GCC. It makes an important contribution by providing a detailed empirical analysis of the interplay between corporate governance and IFRS in emerging market setting and highlights the way for future research. It will provide international business, management, and accounting and finance students and senior practitioners with a completely new and updated guide to the work in the field of corporate governance and IFRS compliance in emerging markets.