The paper aims to examine the effect of good corporate governance practices on corporate transparency and performance of Malaysian listed companies.

Purpose This paper aims to examine the association between new audit committee characteristics – attendance of audit committee members at meetings and changes of members through the demission or appointment of members of the audit committee during the year – and earnings management. Its objective is to contribute new evidence that extends studies on audit committee characteristics in reducing earnings management. Design/methodology/approach The sample comprises 370 observations obtained from the annual reports of 74 companies listed on the Muscat Securities Market for the years 2008-2012. The panel data are analysed using a fixed effects model to validate the hypotheses and model. Findings This study finds a negative association between earnings management and members’ attendance at the audit committee meetings. Additionally, there is a positive significant relationship between earnings management and changes to members through demission or appointment. Originality/value This study broadens the scope of audit committee characteristics by providing empirical evidence of the relationship between new audit committee characteristics and earnings management and may assist policymakers and regulators in determining ways to enhance audit committee characteristics and improve financial reporting quality.

This study examines the influence of corporate governance on the extent of corporate social responsibility and environmental reporting (CSER) in Libyan companies according to legitimacy theory, using quantitative and qualitative methods. The variables used in this study are government ownership, chief executive officer duality, board independence, and board size. The study was conducted in Libya because this country has a unique political and economic system. Moreover, the regime in Libya has influenced the nature of CSER, as has Islamic factor. The quantitative data consist of 162 annual reports derived from 42 Libyan companies. The qualitative data are obtained from 31 financial and information managers from the largest Libyan companies, who expressed their perceptions regarding the influence of the study variables on the extent of CSER. Results confirm that corporate governance generally has no influence on the extent of CSER in Libyan companies, with the exception of board size.

This research focuses on the importance of ownership structure as a determinant of risk disclosure. It is expected to contribute to the literature particularly in the Malaysian context, where risk disclosure practice is in the infancy stage. This study uses multiple regressions in assessing the variability of the extent of risk disclosure. The overall results confirm that highly concentrated ownership would lead to high agency problem, which then leads to less disclosure. This implies that, to promote greater transparency in countries where many of the large listed companies are family-owned, more stringent laws that mandates adequate risk disclosure is clearly warranted. This would ensure that the needs of all stakeholders are properly met.

The results show that, it is proven that the variable liquidity and interest rates have a negative effect on financial distress. Meanwhile, the variables of Profitability, Leverage and Company Size have a positive effect on financial distress. While the Economic Stimulus variable is known to be the relationship between all variables of Liquidity, Profitability, Leverage, Company Size and Interest Rate on variables to Financial Distress. This means that company leaders must take into account liquidity, profitability, leverage, company size and interest rates to avoid financial distress.