Board of Director and Audit Committee Effectiveness, Ownership Structure and Intellectual Capital Disclosure of Listed Banks in GCC Countries

Intellectual capital (IC) disclosure provides signals not only for organizations to gain competitive advantage but it also enables shareholders and other stakeholders to better judge the financial performance and financial position of the organizations. The disclosure of IC is very important in IC-intensive sectors like banking sector. However, generally there is a lack of studies that investigate this issue in the banking sectors indeveloping countries, particularly in Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC). Thus, the main purpose of this study is to examine the voluntary disclosure of IC among listed banks in the GCC. This study examines annual reports of 137 GCC listed banks for the period of 2008-2010 using content analysis. Further it investigates whether the monitoring mechanisms namely, characteristics of effective board and audit committee, institutional ownership, level of market concentration and bank type, influence the IC disclosure. Furthermore, by using hierarchical regression, this study examines the moderating effect of chairman ownership, family and government control, and also information asymmetry on the relationship between the effectiveness score of the board and IC disclosure. The findings of multiple regression show that the level of score for the board effectiveness and audit committee effectiveness, foreign institutional and level of market concentration have significant relationship with IC disclosure. However, when the characteristics of board and audit committee were individually examined with IC disclosure, the results show that only board independence, board meetings, board committees, audit committee size and audit committee meetings have positive and significant relationship with IC disclosure. In addition, based on hierarchical regression analysis, the results show family control, government control and information asymmetry moderate the relationship between the effectiveness score of the board and IC disclosure.The results of this study might be of interest to regulators, investment analysts and market participants as well researchers.