Corporate reporting on the Internet by German companies

Abstract

This study examines the use of the Internet for the disclosure of financial and investor-related information by German companies between two points of time (2000 and 2003). The descriptive part of the study reveals that significant improvements in the amount and the presentation of information at corporate Web sites have occurred since the initial survey in 2000. The second part of the study tried to identify reasons for the differences in the online disclosure practices of companies by testing the association between five firm-specific factors and the level of Web disclosure. The results of multivariate analysis showed that firm size is the only significant explanatory variable for the amount of information disclosed at corporate Web sites which is stable over time. Foreign listing status is only significant for the 2003 sample and free float appeared to be only significant for the 2000 sample. The systematic risk and the profitability have no predictive value for the Internet-reporting practices of the sample companies. Another important result is that the explanatory power of our model is greater for the dimension measuring the amount of information disseminated than for the presentation dimension.