Capital Providers as the main users of accounting information in the Anglo-Saxon world

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to determine if wether capital providers are the main users in the Anglo-Saxon world. Anglo-Saxon nations were found to be Australia, Canada, Ireland, United Kingdom and the United States of America. The nations all share a common-law based legal system that provides a similar level of investor protection and comparable types of reporting entities of accounting information. Australia, Ireland and the United Kingdom all use IFRS accounting standards. The US uses US GAAP, however, there has been increasingly levels of conversion between the two accounting methods. Canada uses IFRS for domestic firms, with US firms allowed to elect to use US GAAP.

The capital providers in these nations are similar. There are well-developed debt and equity capital markets allowing for easy allocation of resources to firms. The primary users as states by the IFRS are the potential creditors and investors of firms. This has been compared to the academic literature available for the Anglo-Saxon nations of how often, how reliable and the methods of use of the accounting information in the decision making of capital providers. It was found that it is probable that capital providers are the main users of accounting information, but due to the nature of equity investors having a range of methods for the decision of buy/sell/hold equities, the nature of modern computing methods to process large volumes of information quickly, and the unlikeliness of investors willing to disclose their winning strategies does create some difficulty in determining if accounting information is part of this decision.