The effect of international financial reporting standards (IFRS) adoption on the value relevance of financial reporting: a case of Russia

Purpose The purpose of this study is to empirically examine the influence of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption by Russian public companies on the value relevance of financial reporting in Russia. Design/methodology/approach We selected 67 Russian public companies that reported both under Russian Accounting Standards (RAS) and IFRS for four consecutive years (2006–2009). Research limitations The main limitation of the chapter is the sample, but this can be explained by the fact that only 67 companies in Russia report under the two standards (RAS and IFRS). So the sample could not be increased as there were no other companies that fulfilled the characteristics of the sample. Findings The results obtained show that on the Russian market there is no evidence of increased value relevance of financial reporting to external users of financial information after adopting IFRS when comparing and evaluating the two regimes (RAS and IFRS) unconditionally. Such results can be explained by the notion of mock compliance which originated due to the institutional differences between the RAS and IFRS development environments. Originality/value Adoption of IFRS by companies in emerging markets has been a subject of interest for lots of researchers, but this is the first research of its kind in the field of value relevance of adoption of IFRS on the Russian market.