Usefulness of corporate annual reports to individual investors in Bangladesh

Pallab Kumar Biswas () and Swapan Kumar Bala
Additional contact information
Pallab Kumar Biswas: School of Accounting & Finance, The University of the South Pacific

International Journal of Disclosure and Governance, 2016, vol. 13, issue 2, No 1, 97-116

Abstract: Abstract The purpose of this article is to examine Bangladeshi individual investors’ use of corporate annual reports and their perceptions of 18 annual report sections. The data reported in this study were collected through a questionnaire survey. The 316 responses received were analysed using descriptive statistics, the ANOVA test statistics, the χ2 statistics, and the Student–Newman–Keuls multiple range test. The study reveals that just over one-third of the respondents regularly read annual reports of the companies in which they have investment. Trading frequency is not significant in affecting the readership behaviour of individual investors. Among the 18 annual report sections, traditional financial statements, namely the income statement, the balance sheet and the cash flow statement were the most read and important sections using both the rating and ranking assessment methods. Corporate environmental report, essay and pictorial on operations are the least read and the least important sections. Lack of time, lack of usefulness and lack of interest were attributable to individual investors’ lack of readership of corporate annual report sections in Bangladesh.

Keywords: emerging markets; annual reports; Bangladesh; individual investors (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/jdg.2015.11 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:ijodag:v:13:y:2016:i:2:d:10.1057_jdg.2015.11

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.palgrave.com/gp/journal/41310

DOI: 10.1057/jdg.2015.11

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Disclosure and Governance is currently edited by Michael Alles

More articles in International Journal of Disclosure and Governance from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().