Does Financial Reporting Disclosures Enhance Firm Financial Performance in the Nigerian Manufacturing Companies?

Abstract

Financial reporting has always been an important factor for investment decision making of shareholders and other stakeholders of a firm in considering returns that have been made or expectation of what should be made. This study investigates empirically, the relationship between financial reporting disclosures in annual reports and the performance of listed manufacturing companies in Nigeria between 2005 and 2009. The disclosure variables include: Timeliness, Board size, type of Auditors Report and the percentage of value added retained for expansion were used as the measures of financial reporting disclosure while Return on Equity (ROE) was used as the measures of financial performance. Size and age were used as the control variables. The study used secondary data and Panel Least Square Regression for the data analysis. The results showed that there is a significant relationship between financial reporting disclosures and financial performance except in the case of percentage of value added retained for expansion size where there was no significant relationship found. It is, therefore, recommended that the Nigerian Federal Government, through her various regulatory agencies, ensure more disclosures is made in the financial report as this is an important means of addressing liquidity problem in the manufacturing sector for financial performance.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n6p332