The Need for Corporate Risk Disclosure in the Nigerian Listed Companies Annual Reports

Abstract

The study aims to elicit stakeholders' perceptions about the prospect attached to corporate risk disclosure in Nigeria. Recently, stakeholders' confidences were significantly affected by the recent financial crisis, sudden collapses of high profile companies across the globe and frequent management malpractices which are became order of the day. These were some of the incidents that have had caused current business environment to be very risky. Consequently, standard setters, academia, shareholders, professional bodies, and other stakeholders have advocated that, corporate entities should report risk related information in the content of their annual reports. Specifically, there were a lot of benefits are attached to this type of disclosure. Hence, to confirm the situation in Nigeria, the study employed survey method on which 300 questionnaires were administered to various stakeholders. The target respondents were financial analyst, stock brokers, bankers and shareholders. 230 questionnaires were successfully completed and returned. The results obtained have been analyzed by simple descriptive statistic. It is found that, corporate risk disclosure enhances corporate transparency; facilitates effective risk management; minimizes the problem of over/under stock valuation; and it also helps analyst to make earning forecast with reasonable accuracy. Therefore, it is concluded that providing risk related information in company's annual report is very important. As a result of that, Nigerian listed entities are urged to report risk related information due to derive all these benefits stated.