Journal of Business & Financial Affairs

Accounting Conservatism and the Company's Performance: the Moderating Effect of the Ownership Structure

Abstract

Affes H and Sardouk H*

The purpose of this article is to highlight the moderating effect of a central mechanism of governance, namely, the ownership structure in the relationship between accounting conservatism and the enterprise’s performance using a sample of French companies listed on the Paris stock exchange. Previous studies have investigated the impact of corporate governance on the level of accounting conservatism. Our objective is to study the effect on the relationship between the level of accounting conservatism and performance of a central governance mechanism, namely, the ownership structure. We examine the concentration effect of institutional, wage and property of such a mechanism on the relationship between accounting conservatism and the accounting company’s performance which is measured by the return on equity in 60 French listed companies belonging to the SBF 120 index in all the period 2007-2012 of enterprises. Else more most of the results support the moderating effect of such a mechanism that has been ignored or overlooked by previous work.