强制性会计信息披露外文翻译

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1、强制性会计信息披露外文翻译 外文翻译Mandatory Accounting Disclosure Material Source: Mandatory Accounting Disclosure by Small Private CompaniesAuthor: Benito Arrunada There are substantial differences in the regulation in different countries on financial disclosure by private companies and, in particular, on publicat

2、ion of their accounts.In the USA, Japan and some other countries, most private companies, whatever their size, are not obliged to disclose financial information.In contrast, in the European Union all companies are required to file their accounts with a public register. Most other countries also requ

3、ire many of their private companies to publicly file their accounts Discussions of these disclosure and publication requirements have led to disparate recommendations to slightly expand publication requirements, maintain them and reduce them, Singapore. More recently, as part of its initiative to si

4、mplify the business environment and lessen administrative burdens, the European Commission2007has also proposed to exempt small companies so that they would not necessarily be required by national law to publish their accounts. The Commission grounds its proposal on the argument that for such compan

5、ies publishing the accounts causes considerable cost with no significant benefit. On the one hand, according to the Commission, the requirement constitutes a major administrative burden. On the other, it is inconsequential if?when given freedom to disclose or not?small firms choose not to disclose b

6、ecause their accounts are only“used by a limited number of stakeholders,such as credit institutions and suppliers that have the possibility to require financial information directly from the company” Mandatory publication of accounts by private companies relates to several strands of the economic, a

7、ccounting and financial literatures:deregulation of business formalities, mandatory financial disclosure, and investors protection and credit information. Findings in all these areas thus provide complementary insights on the issue under discussion Since the 1960s, there has been substantial controv

8、ersy on the balance of costs and benefits and the optimal content of mandatory financial disclosure. In the current regulatory framework of the USA, however,most of these discussions have focused on mandatory disclosure by public companies?that is, companies selling shares or bonds to individual inv

9、estors in stock exchanges. These public companies are required by law to not only file financial information publicly on a periodic basis but also to disclose other information on the company, provide detailed data on new issues of securities and report any trade by insiders. Even though the Europea

10、n Commissions proposal refers to the mandatory publication of annual accounts by small private companies, part of the discussion on mandatory disclosure by public companies is applicable. Other parts of the analysis are substantially different, however, because of differences in the governance struc

11、ture, size and availability of information of both types of companies, as well as differences in the contents of the information being mandatorily disclosed.In particular, previous research has focused on how mandatory disclosure for public companies affects the value of their equity by facilitating

12、 or not transactions on such equity. But the main interest for private companies lies in knowing how publishing their accounts could help their trading partiesmainly banks and suppliersestimate their credit risk, thus expanding their access to credit and lowering its cost. The main effect should be

13、to reduce information asymmetry in creditincluding trade credittransactions instead of in equity transactions In addition, given that the shares of public companies are traded in the stock market, it is possible to estimate the impact of mandatory disclosure on the value of the public companies. How

14、ever, even if the reduction in the transaction costs of credit caused by mandatory publication of accounts also increases firm value, we cannot measure this effect because we lack market prices for equity shares in private companies. Therefore, without a comprehensive metric for evaluating the impac

15、t of mandatory publication of accounts,we can only aspire to building an enlightened qualitative inventory of costs and benefits. The volume of credit contracted in an economy depends on two factors:information available on debtors quality, and the rights that the legal system grants to creditors in

16、 case of default. For the availability of information, the factor on which we are most interested, empirical evidence shows that the volume of credit grows when banks share more information on debtors and when the quality of credit registries improves. It seems that the better the creditors know the

17、 quality and record of potential debtors, the lower the transaction costs of credit, probably because of both improved debtors incentives and easier avoidance of adverse selection. As we will see, the main reason for the publication of accounts is that it allows improved assessment of credit risk fo

18、r both individual transactions and bank and macroeconomic regulation Distortion of competition Publication of accounts might also cause private costs to the disclosing firm by informing its competitors, which might also distort competition. However, this effect seems unlikely to be substantial when

19、small companies are involved. At least, these costs are clearly smaller than those of the disclosure now commonly required from public companies. A useful comparison would be that between the impact of publicly filing the annual accounts with that of announcing, for instance, the cancellation of a r

20、esearch programme. Doubt remains on this point, however, not for the micro and small companies considered by the European Commission but for medium-sized or even large private companies, for which disclosure may be quite sensitive,given their size and presence in concentrated and differentiated mark

21、ets Mapping appropriable benefits Publication of company accounts also provides benefits to the companies involved, to their trading partners and to third parties. This section examines those which are appropriable by the disclosing company Benefits for disclosers and their partners Benefits for dis

22、closing companies and their trading partners arise from reducing the information asymmetry between them: publishing the accounts grants access to potential and current trading partners to the historical record, current financial position and profitability of the disclosing firm. This reduction in in

23、formation asymmetry is especially valuable in transactions that embody future obligations for the firm:clients purchasing durable goods, all parties investing in firm-specific assets, minority shareholders and, especially, trade and financial creditors. Understandably, more transparent firms have be

24、en found to incur lower costs of debt and equity capital Furthermore, publishing the accounts may be more credible and less costly than communicating them individually to contractual parties or handing them only to those parties who request them explicitly. Credibility is gained because filing the a

25、ccounts with an independent third partythe registercommits the firm, as accounts already filed cannot be modified and future accounts will have to be consistent with those filed in the past.Costs are reduced because it is no longer necessary to deliver them to a high number of trade creditors, and p

26、rospective creditors or third parties will no longer have to ask for the accounts to be delivered to them. Individual disclosure as an alternative to public disclosure The alternative solution proposed by the European Commission is for the creditor to ask for the borrowers financial statements. This

27、 solution is problematic, not least because there are often more than two parties to the transaction. Information provided to a party in a one-to-one interaction is often less credible than that provided to all potential parties by filing it in a public registry. Some evidence on this is given by th

28、e common practice in banking of, as a first step, checking loan applicationswhich often include specifically adapted financial statementsagainst reports prepared by business.information agencies. 19 One may assume that if some credit applicants make up their accounts when dealing with banks, they ar

29、e even more likely to do so when dealing with suppliers, given that suppliers are not experts in credit evaluation, do not have such ready access to additional information and are less likely to be a party in future transactions. In addition, asking contractual parties for sensitive information is n

30、ot always a sensible negotiating strategy, because it may destroy trust, which might be needed to adapt the transaction in the future. It may force the transaction to be more formal and legalistic. This seems especially important when making credit decisions as by-products of commercial transactions

31、,many of which need future adaptation. On the other hand, explicit contracting for safeguards is relatively more common and accepted for credit than for commercial transactions, and fewer adaptations are needed Mapping externalities Every time a company publishes its accounts, it benefits third part

32、ies in ways that could hardly compensate the disclosing company in any practical way. Aggregated information on individual firms, even if very small, is valuable for credit information agencies, to improve the accuracy and predictive power of their credit rating models; for analysts and investors, a

33、s it allows them to do comparative analysis when allocating capital among firms and industries; for competitors and competitors investors, when analysing the industry; for regulators and policymakers, when making decisions; for central banks, when evaluating the level of indebtness of the economy an

34、d the soundness of banks; and even for researchers doing empirical work. One may expect that these effects would also indirectly benefit other economic agents, both at the micro and macroeconomic levels. This is the case,in particular, of credit information, bank regulation and national accounting.

35、Externalities in credit information Financial information agencies produce reports containing all sorts of information that is of use for evaluating companies creditworthiness. These reports, which may be customised depending on the needs of the client, often include several years of accounts as fil

36、ed at the Company Register and the identity of the companies shareholders and legal representatives. In addition, not only for companies but also for individual firms, reports might also include, if available, negative information about previous defaults, as filed by trade and financial creditors an

37、d courts, as well as contact information and news clips on the firm.As a summary, they may also offer a credit rating or even an estimated probability of default. The accounts filed with the Company Register are a major component of credit reports, because of the problems plaguing alternative source

38、s of information. Exclusive reliance on negative information about credit defaults worsens the quality of credit assessment, and financial institutions are often unwilling to share positive information on debtors.Furthermore,even sharing arrangements depend on the cooperation of established financia

39、l institutions, which poses serious risks to competition. Externalities in national accounting When building the financial accounts of national economies, many central banks rely partly on the financial statements of non-financial firms, mainly to produce information on their financial operations. S

40、ome countries have developed specific databases of accounts, to which firms send their accounts voluntarily,getting in return privileged access to aggregate information on their industry and the economy. Participation, however, tends to be low and suffers from several biases?e.g. large firms are mor

41、e inclined to participate. This makes it necessary to complement the analysis of their own databases with the accounts of small companies. Do firms balance costs and benefits well? Voluntary decisions by rational decision makers may deviate from the optimal trade-off of costs and benefits for two ma

42、in reasons: the asymmetric structure of the information available and the presence of externalities. In addition, this balancing of costs and benefits may also be hindered when the decision maker deviates from rationality Information asymmetry constraints In situations of information asymmetry, part

43、ies who are better informed may tend to voluntarily disclose their information to uninformed parties to avoid their inferring the worst and reacting accordingly, withdrawing their cooperation or taking precautionary measures. Some evidence on the presence of incentives for voluntary disclosure by pr

44、ivate firms is provided,for instance, by the common practice of credit rating agencies, of using as an indicator of creditworthiness the fact that a company keeps all sorts of registrations up to date:from its listing in the telephone directory to its file in the company register. Informed parties m

45、ay not disclose the information,however, when one of the following assumptions does not hold: 1When disclosure is costly,the possibility that uninformed trading parties will infer the worst from nondisclosure does not necessarily provide enough incentives to disclose. 2For the same reason, a similar

46、 outcome arises when it is not publicly known if the informed party is well informed or not. 3When not all uninformed parties understand the information, their lack of understanding may limit the benefits of disclosure for good firms and firms may end up in a nondisclosure equilibrium. 4When the inf

47、ormed party cannot disclose all informationfor instance, because it would have to prepare several sets of financial statements using different principles, which would be prohibitively expensive, a rule constraining disclosure choice will increase the value of the disclosed information For disclosure

48、 of financial statements by private small companies, three of these assumptions do not hold, hindering voluntary disclosure. First, disclosure is costly, which may deter voluntary disclosure and cause confusion in the signal sent by non-disclosure. Second, it is public knowledge that companies have

49、financial statements, which they use for their own management, so the second assumption does not hold. Third, a substantial proportion of market participants probably do not fully understand the accounts. Fourth, mandatory accounting principles are needed to increase the value of the information by

50、limiting discretion Difficulties for internalising externalities The most important reason for suboptimal disclosure is the presence of externalities: firms lack incentives to voluntarily disclose the optimal amount of information, given that they internalise some but not all the social benefits of

51、disclosure. Furthermore, the use of computers and the Internet has increased the value of these externalities by making it possible to aggregate the information in the accounts and to distribute the information to millions of users more cheaply and promptly.译文强制性会计信息披露 资料来源:小型私人公司强制性会计信息披露 作者:贝尼托 不同

52、国家在金融监管私营公司和披露,特别是关于他们的帐户披露,有重大差异。在美国,日本和其他一些国家,大多数私营公司,无论其大小,没有义务披露财务信息。与此相反,在欧洲联盟的所有公司必须要向公众披露。大多数其他国家的帐户也需要他们的私人公司的许多公开文件的帐户。 这些披露通过讨论和发表给出不同的建议,导致轻微扩大披露的需求,并且去维护他们,减少他们。最近,为主动简化营商环境,减轻行政负担的一部分,欧洲委员会(2007)亦建议豁免小公司,让他们不需要遵循国家法律来披露他们的账户。委员会给出的建议,即这些公司帐目产生的原因,没有明显的好处却花了相当大的成本。一方面,根据委员会的要求是一项重大的行政负担。

53、另一方面,当给定的自由,让企业选择不透露他们的帐户,因为他们的帐户只是“被少量的股东使用,如信用机构和供应商有可能会要求直接从财务信息使用”。 强制性的披露公司帐户涉及到的经济,会计及财务文献:业务手续,强制性的财务信息披露,投资者的保护和在所有这些领域的信用信息,从而发现放松管制下提供的补充讨论的问题的见解。 20世纪60年代,出现了对成本和效益以及财务披露的强制性内容最佳平衡的争论。但是,美国目前的监管机构大部分集中在上市公司的强制信息披露,也就是说,企业在证券交易所出售股票或债券给个人投资者。这些上市公司被法律规定,不仅财务信息要定期公开披露,而且还要披露公司的其他信息,提出对证券新问题

54、的详细数据,报告所有内部贸易。 欧盟委员会的建议,上市公司的强制信息披露的讨论部分,适用年度帐目小型私人公司的强制性披露。但其他部分明显不同,在治理结构,规模和两种类型的公司信息的差异,以及在该资料的内容差异,被强制性披露。特别是,以往的研究集中于如何为上市公司强制性信息披露影响了他们的权益提供便利或不公平交易的价值等。但对私营公司的主要兴趣在于知道如何披露自己的帐户可以帮助他们的交易各方(主要是银行和供应商)估算其信用风险,从而扩大其获得信贷和降低其成本。其主要作用应该是减少信贷(包括贸易信贷)的信息不对称,而不是在股权交易。 此外,鉴于上市公司的股票在股市交易,有可能是强制披露对上市公司价

55、值产生了影响。然而,即使在信用账户造成的强制交易成本也增加公司价值,我们不能衡量这个效果,因为我们缺乏私人公司股权的市场价格。因此,如果没有一个强制性披露帐目的信息,我们只能渴望建立一个综合指标,以成本和效益开明的定性库存。 最后,强制性的财务披露在经济增长中发挥关键作用,因为它是为了“保护”与投资者和债权人的交易的公司法律制度的重要组成部分。强制性的财务披露起着经济增长的关键作用,金融发展是经济增长的重要因素。大多数研究集中于上市公司在股票市场的交易上,但类似的索赔,有关私营公司,主要考虑到对信贷成本的证据。在经济上,信用额度取决于两个因素:对债务人的质量提供信息,并在违约的情况下权利的法律

56、制度补助给债权人。我们在意信息因素的可用性,经验证据显示,信贷供应量增长时,当银行对债务人分享更多的信息和信贷登记时,质量提高。看来,更好的质量和债权人知道债务人的潜在纪录,降低信贷交易成本,可能是因为既提高了债务人激励和逆向选择更容易避免。正如我们将看到的,披露的帐户最主要的原因是它允许信用风险改进评估为个人交易,银行和宏观调控。 竞争扭曲 帐户信息披露会导致私人成本的披露,使事务所通知其竞争对手,这可能扭曲竞争。然而,似乎不太可能大多小公司都参与。至少,这些成本显然比现在普遍要求对从上市公司披露的小。公开申报的与该年度账户披露相比较将是一个有用的影响。例如,一个研究项目被取消。然而,并非由

57、欧洲委员会审议的微型和小型公司在这一点上都有疑问。由于其规模和市场集中和有区别的存在,中型甚至大型私营公司对此披露到是相当敏感。 投资者可占有优势 公司账户披露还使贸易伙伴和第三方公司受益。本节探讨哪些是可受益的披露公司。 披露者和他的合作伙伴 账户信息披露给公司贸易伙伴带来好处,减少它们之间的信息不对称:账户信息披露使公司的投资者了解公司的财政状况和企业盈利能力。这种信息不对称的减少,尤其体现在公司未来债务的价值:客户购买耐用消费品,各方在公司特定资产,少数股东,特别是贸易和金融债权人的投资。可以理解的,更透明的公司已经发现要支付债务和股权资本成本较低。 此外,与合同当事人移交给他们的个人通

58、信相比,披露的账户可能更可靠,只有那些谁要求他们明确各方成本更低。信用是因为申请获得与独立第三方(登记)的帐目提交公司,如已经提出帐户不能被修改和今后的帐户将要与过去提出的一致。成本的降低,因为它不再需要他们提供大量的贸易债权人,债权人和潜在的第三方将不再有要求的帐目交付给他们。 个人披露作为替代公开披露 另一种方案,由欧盟委员会提出的对债权人要求借款人的财务报表。这个解决方案是有问题的,这是因为往往有两个以上当事方的交易。 提供的信息在一对一的互动,以较少的一方往往比提供可信在市场上提交给所有潜在的各方。这是在银行给予的普遍做法,作为第一步,检查编写的报告对贷款按业务应用程序(通常包括特别适

59、合财务报表)。这种信息不对称的减少,尤其体现在交易对公司未来债务的价值:客户购买耐用消费品,各方在公司特定资产,少数股东,特别是贸易和金融债权人的投资。可以理解的,更透明的公司已经发现要支付债务和股权资本成本较低。 此外,要求对敏感信息的合同当事人并不一定是明智的谈判策略,因为它可能会破坏信任,这可能需要适应未来的交易。它可能会迫使更多的交易的正式性和法律性。这似乎是特别重要时按商业交易,其中有许多需要适应未来的副产品信贷决策。另一方面,为保障明确缔约相对较常见的和非商业交易的信用接受,较少的修改是必要的。 外部映射 每一个公司披露其帐户,它使第三方受益,难以补偿披露的公司。对个别公司的资料汇总,即使很少,是有价值的信用信息机构,以提高准确性和他们的信用评级模型的预测能力;为分析师和投资者,在资本和企业之间分配产业时,它允许他们做对比分析;在分析产业时,考虑竞争者和竞争对手的投资者情况;在作出决定时,考虑监管机构和决策者的情况;对于中央银行,正确评估负债经济和银行的稳健水平;做好工作的研