The relevance of accounting information in the era of Ind AS: Evidence from a Nifty Energy Index

This paper aims to examine the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on Indian firms listed on the NSE and analyze its impact on various sectors. In addition, a sub-sample analysis based on market capitalization was performed to understand the effect of size during extreme events. The sample consisted of 1,335 firms listed on the NSE India. A standard event study outlined by Brown and Warner (1985) was employed to analyze the price impact on the COVID-19 outbreak. The event windows from -10 days to +10 days were selected. The estimation window is 250 days. The Nifty 50 has been chosen as a proxy for market return. The sample firms witnessed a negative impact of the COVID-19 outbreak with a negative CAAR in different event windows. In addition, various sectors are classified according their responsiveness towards the COVID-19 outbreak into three groups: highly negatively affected, moderately negatively affected, and slightly negatively affected. The paper also points out that the pandemic substantially affects the above-median market capitalized firms than the below-median market capitalized firms, which contradicts the size effect phenomenon. The results assist shareholders in managing their portfolios and mitigate the systematic risk of their investments during extreme events such as a pandemic, wars, and others. This study is the first comprehensive analysis of the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on different sectors in India. It is also the first study to investigate the size effect anomalies during extreme events.

Past decade has witnessed several changes in the process of conduct of business activities across the world especially due to the wave of globalization. It has also made drastic changes in the process of financial reporting, in particular the continuing adoption of IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) worldwide. IFRS are high quality, understandable, enforceable and globally acceptable accounting standards issued by IASB (International Accounting Standard Board). Thus these are a set of international accounting standards stating how a particular type of transaction and other events should be reported in the financial statements. Thus IFRS are designed as a common global language for business affairs so that company accounts are understandable and comparable across international boundaries. IFRS is becoming the global language of business with over 40% of the world adopting this as their standard for reporting. India also decided to converge to IFRS from 1st April 2016 in a phased manner, which in turn improves the financial statement comparability and transparency that helps to attract greater cross border investments. This paper focuses on the convergence of IFRS with Indian Accounting Standards, its utility, issues and challenges faced by the stakeholders. It also throws light to the ways through which problems can be addressed.

The study aims to synthesize the challenges that retailers are facing during the COVID-19 emergency. The research is definitive, informative, and based on a single design of cross-sectional research. Quantitative data based on the research instrument were produced (a questionnaire). Five hundred responses were collected from employees of major retail stores in India. Retailer performance is considered a dependent variable, whereas employee well-being, customer and brand protection, use of technology, government policies, and supply chain are used as independent variables. The current study results indicated that employee well-being and government policies have a significant positive impact on retailer performance, while customer and brand protection, use of technology, and supply chain have a significant positive impact on retailers’ performance. This study will help retailers develop strategies for their employees to protect them and understand that technology is needed in the new normal times. This study highlights the need to be flexible in executing strategic strategies, but retailers need to develop comprehensive action plans, including selecting managers of initiative and defining goals and deadlines. Provided that retailers’ current reality is different from the old normal, no time is lost in taking audacious action.