Corporate Governance Disclosures in Indian Public Sector and Private Sector Banks – A Comparison of 2008 Disclosures with 2012 Disclosures

Abstract

The Financial crisis of 2008 led the Reserve Bank of India to lay down stricter guidelines for Corporate Governance disclosures especially for banks both in the Private sector and Public Sector. This paper looks at how effective these changes in the guidelines of Corporate Governance disclosure norms in the banking industry have been. The study attempts to look at the disclosure practices followed by the banks in the Public and Private Sector in 2008 and subsequently in 2012. The underlying supposition is that the Disclosure practices followed both by Public Sector as well as Private Sector Banks would be higher in 2012 as compared to in 2008. It is also believed that as the government is a majority shareholder in the Public Sector banks, their disclosures would be higher as compared to Private sector Banks in both the time periods. The annual reports of 34 (18 public and 16 private) banks have been studied on 49 parameters and a Corporate Governance Disclosure Index has been computed for both 2008 and 2012. Student’s t test will be applied to check whether differences are statistically significant.