This article deals with the practices of French corporate environmental disclosure with a focus on climate‐related risks. In particular, it aims to analyse the compliance of CAC 40 firms with the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate‐related Financial Disclosures (2017), an international initiative made up by Financial Stability Board to enhance financial transparency. On the basis of a content analysis of firms' reference documents spanning 2015–2018, we constructed the Climate Compliance Index (CCI) to evaluate whether firms disclose information on climate risks and opportunities about governance, strategy, risk management and metrics. Our results highlight a gradual increase of the CCI despite disparities across sectors and management areas. The content analysis allows us to develop a set of indicators frequently reported by domain and to identify and define climate risks and opportunities and their financial impacts per sector, which is a first step to improve the disclosure of non‐financial information.

This paper investigates whether and how managerial incentives influence the decision to elect optional exemptions when first adopting International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). It also examines the value-relevance of the mandatory and optional equity adjustments that must be recognized as a result of the first-time adoption of IFRS. Both questions are addressed in the context of the mandatory adoption of IFRS by French firms in 2005. Three major findings emerge from our analyses. First, managerial incentives influence the decision to strategically elect one or more optional exemptions at the transition date. Second, mandatory equity adjustments are more valued than French GAAP equity, suggesting that the first-time adoption of IFRS by French firms is perceived as a signal of an increase in the quality of their financial statements. Third, the value-relevance of optional IFRS equity adjustments depends on whether they result in the disclosure of new information.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether formally disclosing an earnings before interests, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) number reduces the information asymmetry between managers and investors beyond the release of GAAP earnings. The paper also assess if EBITDA disclosure enhances the value relevance and the predictive ability of earnings. Design/methodology/approach The authors explore the interface between GAAP and non-GAAP reporting as well as the impact of corporate governance on the quality of non-GAAP measures. Findings Results suggest that EBITDA reporting is associated with greater analyst following and with less information asymmetry. The authors also document that EBITDA reporting enhances the positive relationship between earnings and stock pricing as well as future cash flows. Moreover, it appears that corporate governance substitutes for EBITDA reporting for stock markets. Hence, EBITDA helps market participants to better assess earnings valuation when a firm’s governance is weak. Inversely, when governance is strong, releasing EBITDA information has a much smaller impact on the earnings-stock price relation. Originality/value The authors revisit the issue of how corporate governance relates with earnings quality by considering the potentially confounding effect of EBITDA reporting; it appears that such reporting substitutes for governance in moderating the relation between governance and earnings quality.