Income Statements Transparency and Firms' Characteristics of Companies Listed on the Bursa Malaysia (Report‪)‬

INTRODUCTION Financial statements should always provide reliable information to assist users in decision making. The statement should disclose relevant, reliable, comparable and understandable information. To be understood clearly, the presentation should not be misleading. Readers should be able to understand the information presented without undue effort according to International Accounting Standards (IAS) 1. To achieve this, the annual reports should contain full disclosure and higher level of transparency. As Thompson and Yeung (23) stressed that for a company to be transparent, disclosure means providing a full and frank account of a company's activities. In addition, as far as corporate transparency is concerned, it should be defined as the widespread availability of relevant, reliable information about the periodic performance, financial position, investments opportunities, governance, value and risk of publicly traded firm (3).