Identifiering och redovisning av immateriella tillgångar vid rörelseförvärv –En kvantitativ studie om redovisningstransparens och kapitalmarknadens informationsasymmetri

The association between disclosure level and asymmetric information is a matter of importance and considerable interest to the financial reporting community. The theory in this area suggests that a commitment by a firm to increased levels of disclosure should lower the information asymmetry thus lowering the cost of equity. This theory may be compelling, but so far the empirical results have been ambiguous. Due to increased globalization the demand for high quality accounting standards has risen. In 2005 The International Accounting Standard Board launched the standard named IFRS 3. The launch of IFRS 3 means that the companies listed on the Swedish stock market are now obligated to a larger extent, than before to account for obtained intangible assets instead of reporting them as goodwill when a company acquisition is carried out. This paper aims to empirically examine whether there is a correlation between an increased reporting of intangible assets and the asymmetric information in the stock market. The companies listed on the Small, Mid and Large Cap stock lists on Nasdaq OMX Stockholm exchange are examined during the years 2005-2007. The statistical models used in the study are a Kruskal-Wallis test and a multiple linear regression. The initial finding in this study from the Kruskall-Wallis test indicates that there is a relation between the reported intangibles and the information asymmetry. But due to the fact that the proxy for information asymmetry can be explained by other variables than the one used in this study. A second statistical test was conducted with a multiple linear regression. The result from this test revealed no correlation between increased reporting of intangible assets and the asymmetric information in the stock market. The finding in this study does not show the same results as the majority of previous research. That is that increased level of disclosure, in this case reporting of intangibles, does not correlate with the information asymmetry in the stock market