Title: Transition to IFRS in Germany and Italy: impact on companies' reporting performance

Authors: Michela Cordazzo

Addresses: School of Economics and Management, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Piazza Università 1, 39100 Bolzano, Italy

Abstract: Previous research has investigated the economic consequences of IFRS adoption, but there is little evidence on the impact of IFRS adoption on companies' reporting performance by adopting a comparative approach. To this purpose, this study investigates the impact on reporting performance of IFRS transition for a sample of German and Italian companies listed on domestic stock exchanges. The analysis is conducted on the changes of magnitude of some key financial ratios, in order to highlight the most important differences and similarities between German and Italian companies due to the transition to IFRS. Our results show that IFRS adoption has changed the magnitude of the key financial ratios. These changes are the result of different accounting treatments under local GAAP and IFRS, which are mostly common to Germany and Italy.

Keywords: International Financial Reporting Standards; IFRS; reporting performance; comparison; financial ratios; Germany; Italy; accounting standards.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAF.2014.066072

International Journal of Accounting and Finance, 2014 Vol.4 No.4, pp.323 - 340

Received: 30 Aug 2012
Accepted: 09 Jan 2014
Published online: 12 Dec 2014 *

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