Corporate governance and risk disclosure: Evidence from Saudi Arabia

Abstract

This study investigates the influence of corporate governance on risk disclosure level, in Saudi Arabia. We examine 408 annual reports of Saudi non-financial-listed firms during 2012-2015. The results show that CEO-Chairperson separation, audit committee effectiveness, state ownership, firm complexity, size and profitability positively affect risk disclosure, while we find no significant correlations for board independence, institutional ownership, auditor type, leverage, and firm age. The study is important because it fills gaps in the disclosure literature, especially in developing and Arab countries, and responds to calls in previous studies, such as Dobler et al. (2011), Ntim et al. (2013) and Moumen et al. (2015), that recommend investigating the corporate governance determinants of risk disclosure in these contexts. The results are of interest to accounting setters and governance regulators. The study also provides an evaluation of the Saudi governance code formally applied in 2007.