Corporate governance disclosures in the New Zealand agricultural companies

Abstract

Livestock, agriculture, and horticulture products are essential in the New Zealand economic sustainable development. Consequently performance and governance of active companies in these areas of business are constantly monitored by the public through legislators, stock market, government agencies, and media. Practically corporate governance disclosures are providing essential information for such monitoring and analysis. This paper intention includes critically evaluate corporate governance disclosures of agriculture companies. Implementation of the content analysis methodology enables this research project to present analysis of the level of compliance with the 2004 Corporate Governance Principles and Guidelines that put forwarded by the New Zealand Stock Exchange (governance related disclosure and their non-listed counterpart as expected providing even less disclosure in this area. The financial and governance reports of these companies are suffering from deficient transparency in the area of corporate governance.