연결재무보고 환경에서의 기업위험 판단

The consolidated reporting is adopted on the basis of the concept that the substance over the form in which the entity's financial statement composed of controlling company and subsidiary company represent economic substance more properly than that of controlling company's own. So many researches provide the grounds of that concept that consolidated earnings is more proper measure of summary measure of firms' performance and has an explanation ability of firms' value than that of controlling firm's separated earnings. However the researches concerning usefulness of consolidated financial information dealt with the valuation usefulness hardly pay attention on the usefulness of the role of consolidated financial information on risk assessment. Financial leverage as reported by a consolidated financial statements may differ substantially from leverage for the parent company. To assess the financial risk for the parent(not the consolidated entity), employing consolidated data is hazardous. The problem is magnified in environment in which all firms report only consolidated data. Consolidated leverage almost always equals or exceeds parent leverage, and many firms reporting only consolidated data have betas significantly greater than that of other comparable firms which report both consolidated and separated financial statements of parent company. Unless there are explicit guarantees, there is no legal requirement that parent support the debt of any members of an affiliated system. Yet consolidated reporting can give the appearance of one legal entity, a pooling of resources that may offer mutual support of debt. Sometimes the parent company not only controls a subsidiary company but also take the responsibility of a subsidiary company's liability with explicitly or implicitly. The parent will support all system debt despite the absense of explicit guarantees. In these cases, consolidated financial structure can be more proper measure of risk assessment than that of controlling company's own. The Korean firms were required to report separated financial statements of controlling company with consolidated financial statements of consolidated entity in capital market. However the main financial statement was separated financial statements in Korea, the consolidated financial statements was announced about 1 month later after the separated financial statements of controlling company was announced. The consolidated financial information lost timeliness and only has meanings as subsidiary information as a result. It seems that the information users don't use consolidated financial information but separated financial information for their decision making. For examples, they use financial ratios based on numbers from separated financial statements. The Korean accounting environment change into a consolidated accounting system in 2011, as the KIFRS which will be enforced in 2011, based on consolidated financial reporting environment. This event seems to arouse important change in risk assessment of companies. In this context, We discuss the way how the liability of subsidiary company is considered in risk assessment of interest parties of controlling company in Korea which was in separated financial reporting environment. We investigated whether there exist a difference between separated and consolidated financial information in usefulness of risk assessment and analyzed of which financial statements was used for decision making of users of financial information and to whom the difference of information was significant. This can provide an implications for accounting policy needed in expected consolidated financial reporting environment.