Are disentangled related party transactions value relevant ? some French empirical evidence

International audienceDespite of a lack of of consensus on the usefulness of the disclosed amounts of transactions with related parties in the notes to financial statements, this empirical study investigates the informational relevance of declared amounts in accordance with IAS 24 for a sample of French publically-traded firms over the period 2008-2014. The empirical findings indicate that the amounts of several categories of transactions (commercial, cash, guarantees), are informative and useful for market participants in such a sense they are significantly correlated with share prices and stock return movements. Furthermore, our research contributes to the debates of accounting standard-setters on the desirability of harmonizing regulations on related party transactions and demonstrate the value relevance of these publications. Finally, our results exhibit that, as hypothesized, detailed information about related-party transactions allows us to disentangle their respective informative values