IFRS 도입을 전후한 연결재무제표의 가치관련성 변화

The Korean government adopted International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) for all companies listed on the Korean Exchange for fiscal years starting after January 1, 2011. This change in accounting systems is likely to have impact on value relevance of consolidated financial statements, since many requirements in IFRS differ from those in the previous Korean accounting system (hereafter ‘K-GAAP’). Before IFRS adoption, the parent's separate (hereafter ‘separate’) financial statements were primary financial statements and consolidated financial statements were ancillary to separate financial statements. In contrast, IFRS requires firms to prepare consolidated financial statements as primary financial statements. As consolidated financial statements replace separate financial statements, importance and usage of consolidated financial statements for firm valuation are expected to increase. Furthermore, consolidated financial statements in IFRS are likely to provide information that is different from those in K-GAAP. First, investments in subsidiaries on separate financial statements were accounted for by the full equity method in K-GAAP, whereby producing one-line consolidation in separate financial statements. Moreover, separate financial statements preceding consolidated financial statements preempted information in consolidated financial statements under the K-GAAP regime. Contrarily, investments in subsidiaries on separate financial statements are accounted for by the cost or fair value method in IFRS, implying that separate financial statements no longer show one-line consolidation. Also, consolidated financial statements are disclosed at the same time as separate financial statements under the IFRS regime, indicating that separate financial statements no longer preempt consolidated financial statements. These suggest that informativeness of consolidated financial statements will increase after mandatory adoption of IFRS. Second, different definitions of control between K-GAAP and IFRS will lead to changes in the scope of consolidated entities, which in turn will result in changes in value relevance of consolidated financial statements. Third, there are many differences in accounting policies between K-GAAP and IFRS and such differences will cause changes in informativeness of consolidated financial statements. Finally, statutory disclosure deadline for consolidated financial statements is shortened by 30 days after IFRS adoption for firms with total assets of less than 2 trillion won. The effect of the reduction of statutory disclosure deadline on consolidated financial statements is twofold. The improvement in timeliness will lead to an increase in informativeness of consolidated financial statements. On the other hand, the preparation of consolidated financial statements and external audit must be done in shorter time, which, in turn, may undermine quality of consolidated financial statements. Taken together, various factors are likely to affect value relevance of consolidated financial statements. Thus, this study examines whether these factors indeed result in changes in value relevance of consolidated financial statements after IFRS adoption. Specifically, this paper investigates whether the overall value relevance of consolidated financial statements increases after adoption of IFRS. Then, this study further examines changes in respective value relevance of consolidated net assets and of consolidated net income. Also, this study identifies factors that are likely to bring about changes in informativeness of consolidated financial statements and examine their impacts. The factors are difference in the definition of control, differences in accounting standards between K-GAAP and IFRS, and the shortened statutory disclosure deadline for consolidated financial statements. Our sample firms are listed companies that disclose consolidated financial statements during 2008-2013 and the final sample is 3,068 firms-years. The results reveal that there is no change in the joint value relevance of consolidated net assets and consolidated net income after IFRS adoption. However, value relevance of consolidated net assets alone improves after IFRS adoption, while there is no change in value relevance of consolidated net income. This indicates that revaluation of assets at fair value in IFRS provides more value-relevant information. We also find that net income adjustments due to differences in accounting policies between K-GAAP and IFRS has a significantly positive association with market value. This suggests that income statement items which are recognized only in IFRS, but not in K-GAAP, are value relevant. Lastly, the results show that the reduction of the disclosure period after IFRS adoption has a significantly negative association with stock price reactions to the disclosure of consolidated financial statements. Furthermore, this negative association driven by KOSDAQ firms reflects the market perception that the curtailment of statutory disclosure deadline hurts the credibility of consolidated financial statements for KOSDAQ firms which are likely to be ill-prepared for IFRS adoption. The contributions of this paper are as follows. First, this study contributes to the literature by examining changes in the joint value relevance and respective value relevance of consolidated net assets and consolidated net income. Second, this paper expands the literature by investigating factors that are likely to affect value relevance of consolidated financial statements. This paper is the first study that empirically examines specific factors affecting value relevance of consolidated financial statements.