An Analysis of Earnings Management: Evidence from Food & Allied Industry of Bangladesh

Abstract

The objective of the study is to examine the existence of earnings management within listed companies in the food and allied industry of Bangladesh. The renowned Beneish Model has been used to test whether the firms are involved in any sort of earnings manipulation or not. In addition, the tendency of the companies to continuous practice of earnings manipulation has been examined. The study covers a span of 5 years from 2011 to 2015 where the financial figures are tested on the model to find the probability of the companies being a manipulator of earnings. According to Beneish model, companies with higher M-score (manipulation score) are more likely to be a manipulator. The result shows that twelve out of fourteen companies have significantly higher M-score at least for one year during five-year periods. A further study reveals that a major portion of the industry has the tendency of getting into earnings manipulation on a continuous basis. Though the Beneish Model is a probabilistic approach so it is not stoutly conclusive from the test that companies are manipulating earnings or a continuous manipulator within the observation period.