Board Attributes and Financial Reporting Quality of Listed Consumer Goods Companies in Nigeria

Abstract

The financial scandals surrounding the famous giant companies at the beginning of the twentyfirst century had posed a lot of threats to the accounting profession and hampered the confidence of the users of financial statements globally. Against this background, the study investigates the effect of board attributes on financial reporting quality of the twenty (20) listed consumer goods firms on the Nigerian Stock Exchange for the period 2013 to 2018. Samples of thirteen (13) companies were selected using census techniques after applying two filters. The study uses Ex-post facto research design, panel data were collected from the annual reports and accounts of the population studied. The Ordinary Least squire (OLS) Model Regression was used in testing the hypotheses stated. Findings showed that board expertise was statistically significant and positively related to financial reporting quality at 5% level of significance, thus, it implies any increase in the number of expertise in the board will lead to an increase in the financial reporting quality of consumer goods companies, while board independence and board diversity were found to be insignificantly related to financial reporting quality at 5% level of significance. Therefore, the study concludes that board attributes especially board expertise affect financial reporting quality. The study recommends that non-executive directors on the board with accounting knowledge, professional certification and considerable work experience should be increased in other to reduced management manipulations and prevents frauds in the organization.