Voluntary disclosures by family French firms

Abstract

Our study investigates the extent of voluntary disclosures by family French firms under the entrenchment and the alignment of interest hypotheses. It also sheds the light on the moderating effect of board characteristics on this relation using a self-constructed index. Based on a sample of French listed companies from 2009 to 2013, we use GLS regressions for the empirical investigation. The results show that entrenched families have a negative effect on the extent of voluntary disclosures. On the other hand, in a context of alignment of interest, family firms disclose more voluntarily. In addition, our results suggest that, in the context of entrenchment of the family owners, board characteristics are proved to be inefficient in enhancing voluntary disclosure. So, the presence of entrenched majority shareholders is an obstacle to the proper functioning of the board.