Hur den verkställande direktören påverkar kvalitén på finansiella rapporter : En kvantitativ studie som undersöker verkställande direktörers egenskaper och hur de påverkar godtyckliga periodiseringar i Sverige

Sammanfattning

The purpose of this study is to research which CEO characteristics affect the quality of financial reports. Over the years, interest in the quality of financial reports has increased among investors, stakeholders and standard setters as a result of accounting scandals such as Lehman Brothers and Enron. Furthermore, the CEO has a major role in influencing their firm's financial reporting quality as demonstrated by the Upper Echelons Theory, CEO duties and past scandals. The Agency Theory explains that there are incentives for CEO´s to manipulate results and by that reducing the quality of financial reports. The analysis of the impact of CEO characteristics on the quality of financial reports is based on a quantitative method where data is collected from annual reports as the primary source. The survey consists of companies listed on the OMX30 Stockholm during the second half 2024. The study analyzed those companies during the years 2019-2023 which resulted in a total of 101 data units. The methodology is divided into two parts, where in the first part the authors calculate the quality of financial reports for all 101 data units by analyzing the number of discretionary accruals in the companies’ financial reports. In the second part of the study, a regression analysis was conducted on the value of the quality of financial reports and the characteristics of the CEO, to analyze how they relate to each other. The characteristics were age, gender, nationality, education, tenure, duality and variable compensation. The results of this study show that the CEO characteristics that were analyzed are not significantly related to financial reporting quality in Sweden. With comparison to other similar studies, this study contributes to deeper knowledge of how CEO characteristics affect the quality of financial reports in Sweden but suggests that further research is needed to confirm the results.