Earnings management, corporate governance and goodwill impairment among Malaysian listed companies

The study examines the impact of corporate governance and company characteristics on earnings management practices among Malaysian public listed companies. In particular, the board meetings, board size, chief executive officer (CEO) duality and independent board of directors represent corporate governance mechanism; while the size of the company, return on assets (ROA), market to book value, total current accruals, and operating cash flow represent company’s characteristics. Data are obtained from Datastream and annual report of 126 companies for the financial year ended 2013. The findings indicate a low level of earnings management occurred among Malaysian listed companies. This study provides evidence that boards meetings are significantly and negatively related to discretionary current accruals. Therefore, this study recommends that public listed companies in Malaysia to have a minimum number of six times of board meetings in a year