Introduction

Up until the mid 1980s multinational enterprises usually published only consolidated worldwide accounts. This changed in subsequent years with increasing legal requirements to publish separate national accounts for each subsidiary. Obviously this exposes the subsidiary to the risk of takeover by a competitor and/or to intervention on the part of the host government. This book presents an authoritative and in-depth analysis of the disclosure issue from both theoretical and practical standpoints. The author describes the methods used to research and evaluate disclosure risks and benefits and presents much new thinking and many new research findings on this important topic.