The Effects of Bank Loan Contracting on Financial Reporting: Evidence from Taiwan IFRS Reconciliation

Abstract

This study examines whether bank loan provisions affect the choice of accounting policies for firms during the transition to a new accounting standard, International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Controlling the same underlying economic performance (i.e., Taiwan loan market) and directly measuring and capturing the cross-sectional variation of the effects of individual IFRS firms (i.e., “Reconciliations”) on contractual loan terms. We hypothesize that the magnitude of loan deal amount and various loan provisions affect reconciliations, as calculated by the differences in financial statement numbers under previous local GAAP and IFRS in the transition year. We empirically find that both loan amounts and the number of financial covenants are positively associated with the reconciliation amount’s magnitude. We further divide our sample into positive and negative reconciliation sub-samples. We find that the negative reconciliation firms give rise to our overall results. Our findings are consistent with firms choosing upward/downward adjustments to affect/me provisions during the IFRS transition period.

本研究主要檢驗當一國強制轉換財務會計準則時，對於具有私債融資之上市公司，其債務契約條款是否會影響會計方法之選擇。以我國導入IFRS時為測試樣本，並在控制總體經濟因素影響下，直接衡量個別公司「IFRS差異調節數」之橫斷面變異幅度，以捕捉債務契約條款是否會影響公司選擇有利之會計方法進行報導。「IFRS差異調節數」為轉換會計準則年度時，以IFRS與R.O.C.會計準則之財務報導差異數衡量，如資產總額差異數、權益總額差異數、淨利差異數等。實證結果發現：第一、舉債總金額與IFRS差異調節數兩者為正相關；財務條款數量與IFRS差異調節數亦為正相關。第二、進一步將IFRS差異調節數分成正向調整、負向調整兩組，發現前述實證結果主要來自於負向調整樣本組之效果。本研究實證結果隱含：公司在轉換新的會計準則如IFRS時，具有私債融資的公司，會藉由會計方法之選擇，以符合債務契約條款之規範。