기업의 자기자본조달 계획이 회계정보의 비교가능성에 미치는 영향

This study examines the comparability of a firm planning of equity financing. Comparability is one of the qualitative characteristics that enable investors to distinguish and understand the differences and similarities of accounting titles among firms. In order to look into this, we analyze the samples of listed firms in the year of 2007 to 2010, which was the period just before mandatory application of K-IFRS. We find that the comparability of a firm which plans equity financing is low. Moreover, the comparability of a firm is much lower when the firm is about to raise equity capital and its business performance in future period is worse than that of the industry average after financing. In other words, the more the capital that firm raises, the lower financial reporting comparability and this tendency increases when the firm’s operating performance is worse than that of peer firm. Our findings are consistent with prior research results that have shown a firm is more likely to engage in upward earnings management through discretionary accruals, and management tends to forecast optimistically before its seasoned equity offering. Our results indicate that, when the firm raises equity capital, managers are involved in opportunism and that it includes the fact that managers aggravate accounting comparability. Furthermore, this opportunistic tendency inflates when the future performance is not favorable because managers overwhelm external investors in terms of inside information about future business. Thus, our study suggests that, when a firm raises equity capital, market participants should be more sensitive to manager’s opportunistic intention and the regulatory agencies should also require to provide more transparent information.