Is the Decline in the Information Content of Earnings Following Restatements Short-Lived?

May 6, 2013 Leave a comment

Is the Decline in the Information Content of Earnings Following Restatements Short-Lived?

Xia Chen Singapore Management University

Qiang Cheng Singapore Management University

Alvis K. Lo Boston College

May 1, 2013
Singapore Management University School of Accountancy Research Paper No. 1

Abstract: 
Prior research finds that the decline in the information content of earnings after restatement announcements is short-lived and that the earnings response coefficient (ERC), the proxy for the information content of earnings, bounces back after three quarters. We re-examine the persistence of the drop in the ERC after restatement announcements using a more comprehensive and recent sample of restatements. We find that material restatement firms experience a significant decrease in the ERC over a prolonged period – close to three years after restatement announcements. In contrast, other restatement firms experience a decline in the ERC only for one quarter after restatement announcements. In cross-sectional analyses, we find that among material restatement firms, those that are subject to more credibility concerns and those that do not take prompt actions to improve reporting credibility are associated with a longer drop in the ERC than others. Lastly, we reconcile our findings with prior studies. Our analyses indicate that using a potentially more powerful proxy for material restatements and imposing less restrictive sampling requirement help increase the power of the tests to detect the long-run drop in the ERC.

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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