Corporate governance and segmental disclosure: evidence from Canada

The purpose of this study is to examine the association between a segmental disclosure policy and corporate governance structure within Canadian companies reporting under the Canadian accounting standard Section 1701, Segment Disclosure. Canadian firms subject to this standard are found to be reluctant to provide detailed disclosures of their activities and thus are complying with the minimum requirements using the grouping provision offered by the standard. We also found that except for the duality effect, the structure of the board of directors does not have a large effect on the chosen level of segmental disclosure. Furthermore, the ownership structure was found to influence the choice of the level of disclosure regarding the line of businesses data. This study is primarily motivated by the lack of Canadian evidence on the quality of segment disclosure. Moreover, this research is timely because of IASB's current re-evaluation of segment reporting requirements. Therefore, the expected findings of this study may be of interest to standard-setting bodies in countries lacking effective regulation on segmental reporting, to accounting practitioners, and to users of financial statements.