Mandatory IFRS adoption, corporate governance, and firm value

Abstract

We study whether financial and accounting disclosure affect firm value by focusing on the full adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in Brazil in 2010. We compare firms with ex-ante lower accounting quality (firms in the Regular and Level 1 tiers of corporate governance) with otherwise similar firms that had already complied with higher-quality accounting standards (firms in the Level 2 and Novo Mercado tiers). IFRS adoption has a positive impact of approximately 30 percentage points on Tobins Q and 26 percentage points on market-to-book ratios for firms in the lower governance tiers, and substantially reduces the valuation gap between firms in the higher and lower tiers of corporate governance. This reduction in the valuation gap after IFRS adoption is explained by the relative increase in foreign ownership and stock liquidity of firms in the lower governance tiers.