We investigate the impact of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) changes on International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) reconciliation. Since January 1st, 2011 all Korean listed companies are required to adopt IFRS in their separate and consolidated accounts. To aid investors in evaluating corporate performance over time, the companies must restate the K-GAAP financial statements for 2010 under IFRS. We find that negative IFRS reconciliation is more frequent for firms with CEO turnover in 2011. The result suggests that new CEOs have an incentive to report lower earnings through IFRS reconciliation for the purpose of big bath. Additionally, in order to examine whether new CEOs incentive of the negative IFRS reconciliation is existed in different corporate governance levels, we classify the companies into strong and weak corporate governance. From the test, we find that their incentive of negative IFRS reconciliation is disappeared (existed) in the companies with strong (weak) corporate governance. This study will contribute to academics and disclosure-related practitioners by providing valuable information of the CEO incentive regarding IFRS reconciliation. We believe that our empirical evidence will be helpful to market participants when they make a business decisions in case of CEO turnover.

This paper analyzes the influence of firms’ fair value system on earnings quality under IFRS. Korean firms are required to adopt IFRS in 2011. IFRS adoption was expected to increase value relevance of book value of equity and benefit information users’ decision making. However, prior Korean studies report that value relevance of book value of equity is indifferent between under K-GAAP and IFRS. We consider that the indifference in value relevance of book value of equity after IFRS adoption is due to different level of fair value system among firms. We investigate whether the different level of fair value system among firms lead to the difference in earnings quality. Furthermore, we examine how each firm’s fair value system affect earnings quality under IFRS.  This study finds following results. First, firms with weak fair value system smooth income more frequently. Second, firms with weak fair value system experience small amount of positive profit and slight increase in net income compared to prior period more frequently. Third, firms with weak fair value system make less timely loss recognition. Lastly, book value of equity and goodwill has low relative value relevance for weak fair value systemic firms, while both book value of equity and goodwill have incremental value relevance for firms with strong fair value evaluation system.