Corporate Governance System and Quality of Financial Information

Abstract

At this study, we try to find the relationship between the system of governance and the quality of financial information for a sample of French companies listed in the SBF 250 for a period from 2004 to 2008. The Quality of financial information is approximated by discretionary accruals. Corporate governance is appreciated by a global index with 64 items and three sub-indices relating to the characteristics of the board, ownership structure and quality of the control system. Our results demonstrate that the quality of financial information is positively related to the quality of the board and the quality of the ownership structure. The use of an overall governance index gives more significant results for the three models and affirms the positive relationship between the quality of governance system and the quality of financial reporting. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n2p129