Research On Information Disclosure Of Agriculture-related Listed Companies In China

The system of information disclosure plays an important role in discovery of investment value and formation of equilibrium price in capital market. At present, rules for information disclosure with traditional manufacturing listed companies as the basic assumption premise can hardly be adapted to different disclosure requirements of listed companies in different industries in aspects such as production&operation modes, profit gaining and valuation bases and also cannot fully reflect the unique industrial characteristics of companies or further satisfy demands of stakeholders for high-quality information. In December2013, Shanghai Stock Exchange issued the No.12Work Memo of Daily Information Disclosure of Listed Companies and the No.1, No.2and No.3Guidelines for Operational Information Disclosure of Listed Companies in Different Industries. The issuance symbolizes the changes of information disclosure of listed companies in China from taking the area under administration as the former basic unit to taking the industry as the basic dimensionality, and also symbolizes the greater importance attached to decision correlation of information disclosure. However, the Guidelines only include three industries of real estate, coal and oil&gas. Agriculture-related listed companies have relatively low proportion in the securities market in China, but the state will further strengthen the supporting to agriculture-related listed companies based on the important role played by the agricultural industry; it is shown in financial fraud events occurring over the years that companies of this type occupy relatively big proportion, not only bringing negative influences to reputation of the capital market, but also hindering development of companies of this type in the capital market. Meanwhile, stakeholders and the social public have higher demands for the improvement of quality of information disclosure of this type of companies. The new system of operational information disclosure in different industries will surely produce far-reaching influences on the improvement of quality of information disclosure. This is also the fundamental starting point for discussion of information disclosure of agriculture-related listed companies from the perspective of industrial characteristics in the paper.In the paper, research is carried out centering on the problem about "how agriculture-related listed companies carry out targeted information disclosure according to industrial characteristics". Starting from the industrial characteristics of agriculture-related listed companies, core problems about "what to disclose","how to disclose" and "how to improve quality of information disclosure" are researched in order to provide theories and methods with reference value to perfection of the system of information disclosure in different industries and improvement of quality of information disclosure of agriculture-related listed companies. Innovation work and main research conclusions of the paper are as follows:(1) The author introduces the idea of information disclosure in different industries into the research of information disclosure of agriculture-related listed companies. Agriculture-related listed companies adopt existing information disclosure rules and are limited for reasonable reflection of industrial characteristics and improvement of effectiveness of information disclosure. Therefore in combination with characteristics of agricultural production and operational activities, the development history of agriculture-related listed companies and their expression in the capital market, the author gives sufficient consideration to factors such as supply, demands and supervision of information disclosure and defines emphases of information disclosure of agriculture-related listed companies. Those emphases include that companies at a middle production stage in agricultural activities should pay attention to information disclosure of biological assets, and companies at a post-production stage in agricultural activities should pay attention to information disclosure of trading activities. Meanwhile, companies of both types should pay attention to information disclosure of productive and operational risks.(2) Biological assets are sources for value creation by listed companies in agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishing and are the most principal factor for reflection of industrial characteristics of this type of companies. The paper built a frame for biological asset information disclosure of agriculture-related listed companies and puts forward a realization manner to improve the information disclose quality of biological assets:the listed companies which adopt properties of historical cost measurement should be refined and classified, book value, entity number and variation information of increase and decrease of biological assets should be disclosed as per types, and supervision organizations should encourage or advocate this type of companies to disclose fair value of biological assets outside the balance sheet; the listed companies which adopt properties of fair-value measurement should define types and quantity information of biological assets based on ensuring reasonable measurement, disclose fair value and relevant information about its variation as per types and also clarify bases for determination of the fair value.(3) Trading activities of listed companies for manufacturing of agricultural-products and food processing contain a lot of uncertain factors. According to specialty of trading activities of this type of companies, the paper establishes an information disclosure frame for trading activities of agriculture-related listed companies and puts forward a realization manner to improve the information disclosure quality of trading activities: suppliers and customers are the two most important aspects in trading activities of this type of companies, when information of suppliers is disclosed, companies should pay attention to relevant trades between them and peasant households as well as those between them and agricultural agencies (such as farmers'professional cooperatives); companies should focus on sales channels of company products and should mainly disclose customer information related to a consignment mode and a direct selling mode when information of customers is disclosed; companies should make relevant explanations if incidence relations or dereferencing incidence relations exist among suppliers, customers and companies.(4)"Feebleness" of the agricultural industry will bring more risks to agriculture-related listed companies and this is also a distinguishing feature which makes this type of companies different from other listed companies. Promotion of information disclosure quality of risks is very meaningful to all stakeholders. The paper establishes a risk information disclosure frame of agriculture-related listed companies and puts forward a realization manner to improve the information disclosure quality of production&operation risks:this type of companies should attach importance to disclosure of agricultural risk information, risk information disclosed by companies should contain supporting points of three aspects:information of risk properties, information of risk management and information of evaluation of implementation effects of risk management, while the three supporting points will respectively depend on recognition and assessment of risks, comprehensive risk management (or internal control) and self assessment of internal control effects.