Measuring the level of sustainable disclosure in light of integrated reports to enhance the value of the company

Presented to

 The Council of the College of Administration and

 Economics – Karbala University It is part of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of science in Accounting

By

Alaa Salim Mahdi Al-Saadi

Supervised by

Assistant Professor

Dr. Mohammed Fadhil Al-Yasseri

Abstract

           The research aims to measure the level of sustainable disclosure and its reflection on the value of companies in light of integrated reports. In addition to the statement of the function of integrated reports and its impact on enhancing the value of companies, as well as the benefits of integrated reporting and improving the information environment. Stakeholders, especially investors, can know the extent of the company’s wealth, performance and success rate through the level of sustainable disclosure in light of the published integrated reports and the sustainability information they contain. Therefore, the higher the level of sustainable disclosure made by the company through its integrated reports, the more investors’ interest in the value of the company is expected, and then it will be reflected in the increase in the value of its shares.

In the practical aspect, the research relied on ESG indicators in application of the criteria of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) to measure the level of sustainable disclosure in the banks of the research sample, as well as relying on the Tobin’s Q model to measure the value of the research sample banks by relying on the financial reports of the banks of the research sample published in the Iraq Stock Exchange As well as the Iraqi Securities Commission, in addition to relying on the outputs of the Spss v.22 program to test the correlation and influence relationships between the research variables, for the purposes of study and analysis to reach indicators through which the theoretical framework can be linked to the practical side and to reach conclusions and recommendations related to the topic of research.

To achieve this goal, the Iraqi banks listed in the Iraq Stock Exchange were selected as a research community, represented by a sample of five banks that were selected from among the Iraqi banks listed in the Iraq Stock Exchange (North Bank for Finance & Investment, United Investment Bank, Khaleeji Commercial Bank, National Islamic Bank, Mansour Bank for Investment.

The researcher reached multiple conclusions, the most important of which are: There is an impact relationship between the level of disclosure of sustainability axes (at least one axis) according to ESG indicators in application of GRI standards and the value of Iraqi banks listed on the Iraq Stock Exchange according to Tobin’s Q represented by the sustainability axis related to the governance aspect. Therefore, the most important recommendations made by the research is the need to pay sufficient attention to sustainability indicators, especially those that suffer from weak levels of disclosure.