Impact of audit quality and ownership structure on the bias and accuracy of earnings forecasts issued in IPO prospectuses

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of audit quality and ownership structure on the degrees of accuracy and bias in earnings forecasts issued in initial public offering (IPO) prospectuses in a frontier market, Bangladesh. Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses both univariate and multivariate tests on the sample of 75 IPOs. The paper employs the tests to see the association between the degree of forecast bias and three corporate governance variables. Findings – The results reveal that the magnitude of earnings forecast bias is significantly explained by issuer, auditor reputation, proportions of capital raised from domestic as well as foreign investors, and whether the IPO firm is a start-up venture. Underwriter prestige, length of the issuing firms' operating history, leverage, whether the firm went public during a stock market boom, and forecast horizon do not appear to be statistically significant in explaining the degree of forecast bias. Originality/value – Although auditor reputation and the proportion of equity retained by pre-IPO owners have been investigated in several studies on IPO forecast accuracy and/or bias, no study has attributed them to corporate governance as a whole by combining auditor reputation, and ownership categories held by small private investors and foreign portfolio investors.