The Impact of IFRS 8 on Analysts’ Information Environment : EU Evidence

While the IASB had reduced the differences between SFAS & IFRS, in that IFRS 8 (Segment reporting) is a copy of the US SFAS 131, the quality of segment disclosure after IFRS 8 is under question. The European Parliament endorsed IFRS 8 after a great deal of scrutiny and much debate. Although the endorsement indicated approval of IFRS 8 by the European Union countries, the EU Parliament expressed reservations and regrets about the standard. It has been reported that IFRS 8 achieved the expected objectives, although financial statement users disputing the principle of the core standard. Therefore this paper responds to the call of IASB (2013) and examines the impact of IFRS8 adoption on analysts' information environment using a sample from EU countries for four successive years. The empirical evidence indicates that segment disclosure quality measured by the disaggregation of geographical information is positively associated with the accuracy of analysts forecast and also positively associated with the dispersion. It also supports the benefits of IFRS8 to the properties analyst earnings forecasts. We document increased forecast accuracy and agreement after the switch to IFRS8.Moreover, we find that the adoption of IFRS8 is associated with an increase in the information that has additional value to analyst forecasts while it decreases the irrelevant information