engleski

Internet financial reporting-practice of listed companies from Sarajevo stock exchange

Financial reporting in countries with developed capital markets plays a very important informative role. Reporting and disclosure according to modern accounting frameworks (FASB & IASB) is aimed to provide useful information, reduce information asymmetry and cost of capital. Today, the Internet can be very effectively used for dissemination of financial information to investors and other users. Therefore, the issue of financial reporting has a new dimension and many scientific papers analyze Internet reporting practices of listed companies in the USA and EU countries. The issue of Internet reporting in transitional countries is also becoming more important since capital markets are growing very strongly and there is an increasing number of domestic and foreign investors. Since voluntary Internet reporting has not been scientifically analyzed in Federation Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) there is a very good opportunity for research and contribution to the existing literature. Therefore research was conducted on the sample of listed companies from the Sarajevo Stock Exchange (SASE). The average IFR-Score for 35 companies from SASE came to just 5.43, while maximum score of 30 was not found on the web site of any company listed at SASE. Regression model, comprising data for 33 companies has shown that the size, profitability and industries were not significant in explaining voluntary Internet disclosure measured by IFR- Score. However, official listing, market capitalization percentage and stock turnover were statistically significantly and positively correlated with the IFR-Score. Findings on average indicate that corporations from SASE do not follow modern trends in financial reporting and there is large area for improvement of reporting practice. Having in mind the growth of SASE and its importance in the FBiH economy system it is crucial to improve transparency and disclosure in order to improve investor protection and attract foreign investors.

Internet reporting ; SASE

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