Augustinos I. Dimitras

In this research, the authors proposed a new method to evaluate borrowers’ credit risk and quality of financial statements information provided. They use qualitative and quantitative criteria to measure the quality and the reliability of its credit customers. Under this statement, the authors evaluate 35 features that are empirically utilized for forecasting the borrowers’ credit behavior of a Greek Bank. These features are initially selected according to universally accepted criteria. A set of historical data was collected and an extensive data analysis is performed by using non parametric models. Our analysis revealed that building simplified model by using only three out of the thirty five initially selected features one can achieve the same or slightly better forecasting accuracy when compared to the one achieved by the model uses all the initial features. Also, experimentally verified claim that universally accepted criteria can’t be globally used to achieve optimal results is discussed.

Recent literature on Corporate Annual Reports (CAR) underlines that, in order to meet the changing needs of CAR users, more narrative (forward looking) information should be provided, with a focus on those factors that are liable for longer term value of banks financial performance. This papes investigates the Management Commentary portion (MC) and specifically the effect of Corporate Governance Information (CGI) on banks’ reporting performance mechanisms such as board structure, audit function, bank size and common equity.

Return on Assets (ROA) ratio is used as a proxy to measure financial performance. The data sample comprises of 86 worldwide banks during the period of deep economic crisis (2008-2011). Novelty of the study is the search for the effect of core characteristics of corporate governance on banks’ performance during the financial crisis period. The research uses a Panel Estimated Generalized Least Squares (EGLS) regression model in order to examine the aforementioned effect. The results of this research suggest that boards’ independence strongly supports banks’ efficiency and operations, as well as external audit contributes positively to banks’ efficiency during the crisis period.

This study examines the relationship of auditor tenure and audit quality in four European countries, namely Germany, France, Italy and Spain, with the innovative GMM (Generalized Methods of Moments) model during the period from 2005 to 2013.
Two GMM methods are used with two alternative definitions of crisis – the main and the robustness method. The results agree regardless of the fact that some of the control variables are excluded in the robustness test.
The results support the finding that in Spain, there is an impact of auditors’ long-term tenure on discretionary accruals, affecting auditors’ quality and independence indirectly. In addition, the crisis affected Germany and France as far as the change in negative and positive values of GDP is concerned. In this respect, the crisis affected the above two countries when the years before and after the crisis are considered as a robustness check. The results contain important implications for accountant regulators and policy makers.