Factors Influencing the Voluntary Disclosure of Vietnamese Listed Companies

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the factors affecting the extent of voluntary disclosure by examining the annual reports of 205 industrial and manufacturing companies listing on Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HSX) and Hanoi Stock Exchange (HNX) for the year of 2012. Those factors include company size, profitability, leverage, state ownership, managerial ownership, and foreign ownership, board independence, role duality, and type of external auditors. Evidence from this study suggests two main findings: (1) Companies with high foreign ownership have a high level of voluntary disclosure; (2) The company size is an important factor related to the increased level of voluntary disclosure in annual reports of Vietnamese listed companies. However, no significant associations are found between profitability, leverage, state ownership, managerial ownership, board independence, role duality, and type of external auditors as hypothesized in this study.