ABSTRACT
There is no pretence that the agency model offers several ways of resolving the problems associated with the separation of ownership and control in public limited liability companies. In a bid to avert some of the recent financial scandals and corporate abuses in Nigerian companies, and similarly, promote good governance, the Securities and Exchange Commission, have proposed a recently reviewed Code of Governance with a far reaching implications to all companies who fails to comply fully from April, 2012. The correlation between corporate governance characteristics and voluntary disclosure has been dissected in the context of developed economies. However, recent attention has turned to emerging markets with a view of examining these relationships.
The primary aim of this study was to examine the theoretical framework between three major corporate governance characteristics and voluntary disclosure in listed companies in Nigeria. These attributes are; board independence, ownership structure (with regards to institutional ownership), and duality of the CEO. Using the weighted voluntary disclosure index to measure the extent of voluntary disclosure of 31 listed companies in Nigerian Stock Exchange, the result found out that there is a positive correlation between board independence and voluntary disclosure, while institutional ownership and CEO duality indicates no significant relationship with voluntary disclosure.
Keywords: Corporate Governance, Voluntary Disclosure, Nigerian Companies, Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE)
Table of Contents
LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES
Chapter One
Figure 1.1 Average premiums of those investors willing to pay premium
Chapter Three
Table 3.1 Composition of Sample by Industry
Table 3.2 List of Sample firm ranked by index of voluntary disclosure
Table 3.3 List of variables, signs and expected relationship in the regression
Chapter 4
Table 4.1 Descriptive Statistics for all Variables
Table 4.2 Pearson Correlation Analysis Results (N=31)
Table 4.3 OLS Regression Result
