Banks in Brazil and Spain: Explanatory Factors for the Disclosure of Relational Capital

Abstract

This article analyzes the voluntary information disclosure on relational capital of the business, and the explanatory factors of the banks registered in the Brazil and Spain stock markets. This study is based on the existence of information asymmetry in the capital market due to the difference between the market price and the book value of these companies. The theory of the agency proposes that the voluntary information disclosure reduces the agency costs. The theory of the proprietary cost assumes that disclosing information generates costs. As a matter of fact, the necessity for information transparency emerges due to market pressures. In this way, this work aims to raise interest in agents towards the voluntary information disclosure as to reduce the problem of asymmetric information in the capital market. This study analyzes the disclosure of 66 indicators on representative information of relational capital of the business of 27 banks, in 162 annual reports during the 2006-2011 period. The sample is made up by banks that disclose their full annual reports in their website during the study period. We build a matrix for each bank, with a column for indicators and a column for every year, with a number one if the indicator was disclosed and zero if it was not. We performed a descriptive analysis as to examine the disclosure level per country. We used the multiple linear regression
technique, through the least squares method with panel data for the analysis. We concluded that the greater the size of the bank, the higher the profitability, the higher the debt, and the more years it has existed, the higher the voluntary information disclosure on intangibles related to relational capital.