L’informativa sui rischi nelle banche italiane quotate al FTSE All Share. Analisi empirica della disclosure nel triennio 2006-2008

Since the 2005 the relevance of the disclosure on company’s risks as well as the systems for risk management has increased and this is probably due to the major importance assigned to such information by the International accounting standards (particularly IFRS 7 and IAS 32) and the EU directive 51/2001. In this paper are presented the results of an empirical analysis carried out on the annual reports of Italian banks listed to the segment “FTSE All Share” of the Milan Stock Exchange. The main objectives of the research are: - Evaluate the propensity of the banks to report voluntary the information about their risks; - Analyze the attributes (qualitative vs. quantitative, past oriented vs. forward-looking orientation, etc.) of the risk disclosure; - Assess if some relations exist between the quantity of the risk disclosure and other key risk indicators such as the TIER 1 ratio and the Beta. The findings of our analysis reveal that the risk disclosure concerns almost entirely the mandatory information that the company must produce according to Italian law (particularly the “Circolare 262/2005” of Bank of Italy) whilst the voluntary disclosure is significant less extended than the mandatory one. The normative requirements influence the content of the external reporting so as the major part of the information regard those elements (type of risks, actions of risk management, units involved in the risk management processes, etc) that the company must produce to comply with the aforementioned Law. The analysis of data shows that a significant relation exists between the quantity of the risk disclosure that concerns credit risk, market risk and operational risk and the level of company’s risk. This means that those banks with a high level of inherent risk (measured by the Tier 1 ratio) and a high level of systematic risk (measured by the Beta) disclosure more information on risks. This mean that risk reporting could be seen by the financial statement’s prepares as a mean for reducing the perception of the bank’s risk profile that the stakeholders could have if they use other risk indicators as the Tier 1 ratio or the Beta.