The Effects of Board Compositions and Audit Committee Characteristics on Information Disclosure Practices: A Case of Singapore

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the effects of board compositions and audit committee characteristics on disclosure practices in Singapore. The ASEAN Disclosure Index, covering 212 items in 3 domains: Financial Information, Non-Financial Information, and Strategic Management Information, was constructed to capture disclosed information of 22 listed companies from 2011-2015, made out of 110 observations. In the analytical procedure, multiple regression models were tested through EVIEWS 10 with an ordinary least squares (OLS) method to estimate the connection between the predictors and the dependent variable. An empirical result reports that board size, audit committee independence, a number of audit committee meetings and a number of audit committee participation rates have a positive relationship with the level of corporate disclosure while CEO duality has a negative association with information disclosure practices. For other variables covering board independence, a number of board meetings, a number of director participation rates and gender diversity, no significant relationship was found. The findings might help regulators in enhancing the level of corporate disclosure in Singapore as well as neighboring countries in Southeast Asia region. Furthermore, this study also contributes to the literature by offering a new instrument for assessing the extent of corporate disclosure in Southeast Asia region and also providing some insight into the relationship between corporate governance mechanisms on information disclosure practices based on the Asia’s developed country perspective.