An analysis of corporate governance information disclosure by Canadian banks

Abstract

The study reports on the disclosure of governance information by Canadian banks. The information was found through their corporate Web sites. The online information was taken from the Corporate governance Web page and through the annual reports and the proxy circulars. We focused on the disclosure of the corporate governance practices implemented by our sample of 8 banks. A coding sheet was developed to evaluate the corporate governance disclosure of our sample. Our analysis indicates that the bigger the bank, the more disclosure there is. Overall, our results suggest that the choices to disclose and the extent of disclosure are influenced by the strategic considerations of management. We also found that, to be able to find full and complete information on governance, the investor should refer to the annual reports and the proxy circulars and not only focus on the corporate governance Web page.