Impact of New Corporate Governance Code on Disclosures: Evidences from Bahraini Listed Commercial Banks

Corporate Governance has attracted a great deal of public interest after numerous financial irregularities occurred across the globe such as, Olympus, Satyam, Enron, WorldCom, AIG and so on. Taking cognizance of this, The Ministry of Industry and Commerce (MOIC) of Bahrain issued a Code of Corporate Governance which was made effective from January 1, 2011. Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB) has subsequently updated its Rules Book for its licensee banks based on this code. The purpose of the study is to determine the coverage of corporate disclosure's by all listed commercial banks in Bahrain Bourse and test their quality, before and after the Corporate Governance Code. For the purpose of this study, a detailed questionnaire was constructed after substantial literature review and brainstorming with various researchers, practitioners and bankers. Each bank's disclosures such as annual reports of 2010 and 2011 and other records available in their website were deeply analyzed and used to answer the questionnaire. In this study, all banks’ board have been found recognizing the increasing importance of good corporate governance practices, as an important ingredient in the creation of sustainable shareholder value and protecting the interest of all shareholders. The study concluded that there occur effective and positive changes in corporate disclosures after the introduction of Corporate Governance Code.