Voluntary Annual Report Disclosures By Malaysia Multinational Corporations

Abstract

Annual reports disclosure of multinational corporations (MNCs) is subject to various domestic as well as international users requirements. Voluntary disclosures act as one of the ways that these MNCs can use to overcome the gap between information provided in annual reports and information expectation by these users. This study examines the relationship between the level of information disclosures and some of the MNCs characteristics. The level of disclosures is based on the amount of the voluntary disclosure information gathered from annual reports of listed MNCs on Bursa Malaysia across six industries. Overall, the results show that level of voluntary information disclosures is positively related to size of the company and the type of audit. Meanwhile, the level of multinationality is significantly related to tire level of projected information disclosures and MNCs in particular industries (e.g. construction industry) seem particularly inclined to provide such information (e.g. summary of history results). Thus, these results indicate that the factors explaining voluntary annual report disclosures differ by the types of voluntary information presented in annual reports