IFRS, gouvernance et qualité de l'information financière – IFRS

About three years after the mandatory application of IFRS within Europe, what is the outcome of such a normative revolution in terms of quality of financial reports issued by listed companies? In other words, did the generalization of IFRS effectively improve the financial reporting quality? This question is largely rooted in the IFRS framework, for which the quality of accounting numbers aims at promoting the access to strongly integrated financial markets at the lowest cost. A corollary question then emerges: is the effect of IFRS on financial reporting quality homogenous across the main intra-European stock markets; or is it contingent to national legal and financial systems that still persist within Europe? We will investigate these issues in a positive way, using a framework that considers the main stakeholders in the financial reporting process: the preparers of financial statements, the auditors and corporate governance devices, the financial analysts, the fund providers and the other users of financial reports.