Financial reporting quality in private equity backed companies: the impact of ownership concentration

Abstract

We empirically show on a sample of 270 unquoted, private equity backed companies that the shareholder structure of private companies impacts the quality of their publicly available accounting information. More precisely, companies in which private equity (PE) investors have a high equity stake produce lower quality accounting information than companies in which PE investors have a low equity stake, after controlling for factors like company size and age. We explain our findings by arguing that PE investors with low equity stakes have a higher need for high quality accounting information whereas PE investors with high equity stakes have other means to closely monitor their portfolio companies.