Optimal decision-making is based on the quality of information available to the decision maker. Financial statements published by companies are the major sources of financial information available to investors and other stakeholders of the company. The credibility of these financial statements has very salient implications for the quality of decisions that investors can make. By using primary data collected from two hundred and forty eight respondents, and secondary data from twenty quoted companies in Nigeria, we sought to determine the relationship between corporate governance and the credibility of financial statements. The secondary data was analysed using multiple regression, while the primary data was used to test hypotheses using the chi-squared test. We find that including non-executive directors on the board, and compliance with audit committee composition as provided by the Nigerian Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA) 1990 are likely to enhance the credibility of financial statements. We did not find evidence to suggest that CEO duality or absence of institutional shareholding would have negative effect on the credibility of financial statements. We recommend that apart from including non-executive directors on the board and ensuring that the composition of the audit committee complies with corporate regulatory framework, stakeholder must constantly assess the credibility of the financial statements by assessing the benefits accruing to them in relation to their financial exposure to the organization.

This study examines earnings surprise and share price of firms in Nigeria. It sought to evaluate the impact of earnings surprise in predicting share price of firms. The paper employed the Ohlson valuation model and variants of the model to ascertain the impact of earnings surprise on share price. The sample consisted of 76 listed firms over the period 2010–2020. The study reveals that earnings surprise has a negative insignificant impact on share price. The study further reveals that with the interaction of earnings surprise with the bottom line metrics of book value per share and earnings per share, earnings surprise also has a negative insignificant impact on share price of firms, respectively. The paper provides fact that earnings surprise interacts with book value per share and earnings per share in determining share price. This paper also presents evidence to the fact that investors are not just concerned with the magnitude of book value per share and earnings per share but are also concerned with the quality of the earnings in terms of its surprise. This paper further presents evidence to the fact that investors do not consider magnitude and surprise of earnings in isolation. Rather, the decision is influenced by the fusion of the magnitude and the surprise of the metric.

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