The Effect of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Adoption On the Performance of Firms in Nigeria

Abstract

This paper assesses the effect of compliance with the regulation and provisions of the international financial reporting standards on the performance of some selected Nigerian banks that are quoted on the Nigerian stock market. The paper defines the change in performance based on two parameters. First, change in Accounting Quality of the firms, for which we used such variables as; earnings management, and timely loss recognition. Secondly we measure the performance of the firms based on changes on identified financial ratios of the firms. We tested the impact of adoption as it relates to profitability, growth, leverage, and liquidity performance. The paper utilizes secondary data to tests the effects of the adoption of IFRS on the performance of the selected firms in Nigeria. Logit regression and t-test were used in the analysis. The paper finds that variability of earnings has decreased from an average of 32624.4 to 14432.2 which suggest that there was low variability in earnings in the post adoption period. Timely loss recognition is the measure for prevalence of large negative earnings where large negative results suggest that the loss recognition is not timely in the post adoption period. For our study we found LNEG to be positive which signifies that IFRS firms recognize losses more frequently in the post adoption period than they do in the pre adoption period, we therefore conclude that accounting quality improves after the adoption of IFRS. Furthermore, under IFRS firms tend to exhibit higher values on a number of profitability measures, such as earnings per share (EPS). It is our recommendation that comprehensive implementation of the standard to its totality by firms should be encouraged and regulatory authorities such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, and external auditors should monitor strict compliance with the adoption and provisions of the standards.