Indian Journal of Corporate Governance

This study is to identify the role of Corporate Governance (CG) and its importance in Hong Kong fashion retailing industry. It compares the CG performance of the listed companies, and then examines the relationships among CG disclosure, proportion of independent non-executive directors (INEDs) on the board and the company size. Content analysis has been adopted to analyze data, and CG disclosure guidelines of Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants are used as evaluation tools to analyze the CG disclosure of the selected companies. The study result supports the relationship between CG disclosure and company size. It also discovers there is no relationship between the disclosure and the proportion of INEDs. This study provides further information for the fashion retailing companies to examine the importance of Corporate Governance.

The Indian economy showed an impressive growth of 8.8% in June of 2010 fueled by various sectors and the indicators are positive regarding the foreign reserves and foreign direct investment. But, there are also some constraints and lack of transparency present in its governance issues. As corporate governance became the subject of attention in recent times, its presence is like a backbone for any corporate that emphasizes its role for survival and sustainable growth in the long run. It ensures transparency. Transparency includes the following eight concepts, namely accuracy, consistency, appropriateness, completeness, clarity, timeliness, convenience, and governance & enforcement. Out of these, Timeliness of financial reporting is one of the attribute of good corporate governance identified by the OECD and World Bank. Shareholders and other Stakeholders need information while it is fresh and with high relevance. This paper examines the timeliness of financial reporting by Indian companies which constitute the SENSEX index of BSE. Timeliness was measured by counting the number of days that has been lapsed between year-end and the date of the auditor's report of the concerned companies. As Sensex became the face of the Indian economy, we took 30 companies present in the SENSEX index of Bombay Stock Exchange and compared their reporting patterns for the financial years 2006–2010. The reliable data were drawn from the CMIE database Prowess and the Annual reports of the respective companies for the years 2006–2010.

This paper purports to discuss the various perspectives and methodologies that have been used in disclosure studies across countries. Investigating disclosure in annual reports has been a topic of research interest for a long time. Adequate disclosure in the annual report is significant for the stakeholders of a firm and has been proven to create a favorable impact on the company. Researchers have used several methods to measure disclosures in the annual reports and have used different methodologies to analyze them. Numerous pros and cons for each of these methods have been identified in subsequent studies. This paper reviews the existing literature and reports the various concerns that have been raised by researchers and methodological changes required in disclosure studies to overcome these.

The present paper examines the ethics of corporate governance (CG) practices of Jammu and Kashmir bank using content analysis. The annual reports from 2001-02 to 2008-09 are analysed with respect to board composition and various mandatory and non-mandatory committees. Corporate Governance scores are also calculated for the financial years to know the extent of corporate governance practices adopted by the bank. On the basis of findings, the study concludes that overall compliance of Jammu and Kashmir bank with respect to corporate governance practices as mentioned under clause 49 of the listing agreement is in general very good. However the quality of CG in the last financial year (2007-08) the quality of CG was excellent as the bank was following majority of the guidelines of Clause 49. The financial year 2008-09 shows fall in the CG score to 85 from 89 (2007-08). The study concludes with suggestions for improvement in the quality of CG practices.