Announcements of Going-Concern Problems Among Japanese Firms

Abstract

Using a sample of firms from the Japanese stock market, this paper tests models that predict (or explain) bankruptcy and return on assets to examine the information content of announcements of going-concern problems towards future performance. Overall results show that going-concern (GC) announcements are helpful in predicting future performance and are robust to the inclusion of competing distress proxies. When the role of different types of going-concern announcements is explored, results show that information content varies among types of GC problems. In particular, announcements classified as “material loss”, which are the least predictable among GC problems, have the strongest relation to future performance.