中国上市公司财务重述原因分析

Causes of Financial Restatement for Chinese Listed Companies

我国上市公司财务重述已经成为监管机构和准则制定者亟待解决的问题。本文通过分析与财务重述相关的信息,试图厘清财务重述的内在原因,以此为财务重述的治理提供有益的帮助。我们研究发现,公司内部控制缺陷是财务重述产生的最主要原因,其他的原因还包括管理层的盈余操纵、准则的模糊性和业务的复杂性。此外,为了更好地理解上市公司财务重述的发展趋势,本文还考察了财务重述的重要性边界及其变化情况。结果表明,样本期内财务重述的重要性边界不但没有下降,反而大幅度提高。这说明,我们可能逐年低估了我国上市公司财务重述的数量和比例。

Financial restatements of listed companies have become a difficult problem for regulators and standard setters to be solved. This paper tries to clarify the underlying causes of financial restatements by analyzing the disclosures related to each restatement and hopes to provide useful help for the governance of financial restatements. We find that internal control weaknesses are the main reason of financial restatements. Other reasons include earn- ings manipulation of management, transaction complexity and indistinctness of the accounting standards. In addition, in order to better determine the trend of financial restatements, we also analyze the materiality threshold of financial restatements. We find that the materiality threshold of financial restatements has greatly increased during the period of sample. This result suggests that the number and proportion of financial restatements may be underes- timated year after year.