Earning management in Brazilian financial institutions

Autor: Adriana Bruscato Bortoluzzo, Hsia Hua Sheng, Ana Luiza Porto Gomes
Jazyk: English<br />Spanish; Castilian<br />Portuguese
Rok vydání: 2016
Předmět:
Zdroj: RAUSP: Revista de Administração da Universidade de São Paulo, Vol 51, Iss 2, Pp 182-197 (2016)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1984-6142
DOI: 10.5700/rausp1233
Popis: ABSTRACT The present study aims to study earnings management in a significant sample of 123 banks in the Brazilian market between 2001 and 2012. Given the important role that banks play in a country's economy, it is important to understand that there are discretionary factors involved in the reporting of a financial institution's profitability. Credit provisioning guidelines for Brazilian financial institutions are described in Resolution 2682/99 of the National Monetary Council (Conselho Monetário Nacional). Because of the discretion allowed in this resolution, loan loss provision is used as instrument of earnings management, which is not an illegal practice, but this behavior does affect the risk perception of agents and analysts, and they should be aware of it and understand it. We found that credit provisioning is used as an earnings management mechanism to smooth the net income of Brazilian financial institutions. Brazilian banks tend to avoid not only negative net income pre-loan loss provisions and taxes, but also negative net income pre-loan loss provisions and taxes in relation to the previous period. Contrary to the previous studies, it is not clear if banks avoid lower net income pre-loan loss provisions and taxes than a given peer group.
Databáze: Directory of Open Access Journals