Journal of Empirical Research in Accounting
Year:2015 | Volume:5 | Issue:17 |Papers Count:10

This research examines the effective internal controls in Investment firms from the viewpoint of external auditors. Due to the special nature of investment firms and complex transactions (online Transactions and future Transactions and …) and also lack of resources for internal controls being responsive to investment firms, research in this area seems necessary. In this research using library resources and query and consulting with investment firms' managers and the independent auditors responsible for auditing investment firms, a questionnaire containing effective internal controls in investments firms has been provided for the external auditors to express their opinion. The sample consists of 100 external auditors. This study is descriptive and the questionnaires have been used for research purposes. To analyze the data, the mean and a binomial test (ratio) by software SPSS have been used. The results of research display a list (Transactions Regulations adopted by the Board, Separation of duties, Periodic review by the Office of transactions and compliance with the CEO and…) of internal controls in investment firms.

This research have been done in Novin Tous Holding Company with the aim of linking the corporate governance with opportunities that whole network approach can provide for understanding the processes that govern the company. Each member of the company as an actor in the social network, shares his/her material and intellectual capital, as well as his/ her tangible and intangible assets with other stakeholders in the company. Whole network analysis is a way for identifying the start, path and destination of the process that governs the company; and with recognition of the informal powers and key persons in organization, it provides for an effective control of the organization. It also plays an important role in reaching the goals of corporate governance.  Findings show that the higher informal power with creating the authority in distribution of resources provides greater control in corporate governance.

The aim of this study is to investigate the relation between audit fees and Board compensation. The sample includes 72 firms listed in Tehran Stock Exchange during the period from 2005 to 2009, which their shares are actively traded in the Exchange. The results indicate a positive relation between the audit fee and compensation of the Board. With the increase in compensation of directors, their incentives to manage earnings will be greater and sine it requires a higher quality audit, payment of fee will be higher.

The aim of this research is to recognize earnings management of the firms listed in Tehran Stock Exchange using changes in asset turnover (ATO) and profit margin (PM). ATO/PM model and Jones adjusted abnormal accruals model have been used to recognize upward and downward earnings management. Statistical population contains 133 firms during 2004-2011. The correlations tests, the mean equality tests such as t-student & Welch, and also panel/pooled regression models have been used to test the research hypotheses. Findings indicate that contemporaneous increases in PM and decreases in ATO cannot be as a recognizer of upward earnings management, and also contemporaneous decreases in PM and increases in ATO cannot be as a recognizer of downward earnings management. Also, results show that Jones adjusted abnormal accruals model as compared to ATO/PM model has incremental and greater relative information content in recognition of earnings management.

This paper studies the effect of ownership structure of firms listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange on value added coefficient of intellectual capital.The ownership in this research has divided into director, corporate, and institutional ownership and the value added of intellectual capital is measured using PULIC model. The sample of this research consists of 81 firms in eight years (2003-2010). In order to analyze the data, SPSS software and to test of hypothesis the regression method has been used in this research. The results show that director ownership doesn’t have a significant linear relation with value added coefficient of intellectual capital but corporate and institutional ownership have a positive relation with value added coefficient of intellectual capital. In this research, the control variable of company size has been used in the model and it is cleared that the size of company has a positive relationship with value added coefficient of intellectual capital.

The research deals with the relation between asset growth and stock return and also the role of financing resources in returns of firms with high or low asset growth. With an accurate study of literature, six hypotheses and a statistical sample of 96 firms listed in Tehran Stock Exchange for a seven-year period during 2005 to 2011 have been provided. Hypotheses were analyzed by multivariate regression and tests of F and t. Results obtained by hypothesis test show that  there is a significant positive relation between asset growth and stock return of firms and there is a significant negative (positive) relation between internal & external financing and stock return of firms with high (low) asset growth. But relation of financing through bank and capital market with stock return of firms with high (low) asset growth is significantly positive (negative). In addition, the results show that there is no significant relation between the proportion of free float shares and stock return of firms with high asset growth, however, there is positive and significant relation between the proportion of free float shares and returns of firms with low asset growth.

In decision making, timeliness is one of the useful information features that have increasingly attracted the attention of regulatory agencies. This paper examines factors which are related to the timeliness of annual reporting financial statements in Tehran stock exchange listed firms. The effect on financial reporting timeliness of factors such as the ratio of the investment institutes, major shareholders and institutional shareholders ownership, the ratio of the shares held by the CEO and board, the quantity of the majority shareholders, and the ratio of the non-executive members, duality, big auditor, auditor change, size, age, ROE, good news, consolidate financial reporting and the quality of the costing system, opinion of the independent auditor and industry during the years 2008 to 2011 have been studied. Neural networks and decision trees techniques is utilized for data analysis. The Results show that the institutional shareholders ownership, quantity of the majority shareholders, industry, big auditor, opinion of the independent auditor, ratio of the non-executive members, consolidate financial reporting and ROE have the greatest effect on quality of timeliness, respectively. Also average accuracy of neural networks technique is higher than decision trees technique.

This study investigates how the market reacts to a negative revision of management earnings forecast (bad news) and late announcement of this news. The study spans the period of 2004 (AHS) to 2011.  The linear multivariate regressions have been used to test the hypotheses. We found that market reacts negatively to bad news but late news are followed by a positive market reaction. Also, there is no difference in market reaction to late and on time bad news. But late announcement of good news is followed by a positive differential reaction, as compared to on-time announcement of it.

Predicting consolidated earnings provides useful information to evaluate a parent company, since earnings of the entire consolidated entity accrue to parent company shareholders in the form of dividends. Using earnings prediction approach and reported earnings levels in subsidiary and parent company income statements, this study provides empirical evidence on the prediction of consolidated earnings. The sample includes all firms listed in Tehran Stock Exchange over the period of 2003-2009. All the firms had already prepared consolidated financial statements according to Iran accounting Standard No.18. The results show that subsidiary earnings have less power than the parent earning in predicting consolidated earnings.

Predicting financial distress, which normally happens before bankruptcy, is a challenging phenomenon and a crucial issue in all firms. The importance of data mining tools is well recognized, such that nowadays they are widely used in different financial issues such as, prediction of bankruptcy, financial distress, company's performance prediction, management fraud discovery and credit risk assessment. Using support vector machine and combinations of cash flow components, this research attempts to predict financial distress of companies. Combinations of cash flows, as input variables (data) of the model, are selected based on specific criteria of financial distress. Results reveal that among Kernel functions of the model, polynomial function has the most power of prediction in year of financial distress or one and two years prior to year of distress.