Board Characteristics, Voluntary Disclosure And Enterprise Value

The growth enterprise market (GEM) of our country launched in October 2009, Different from main board market, the GEM has characteristics of high risk and low barriers to entry and high growth, so, in GEM investors require more frequent and broad information. In Chinese academic circle, research for the voluntary information disclosure is still in the exploratory stage, study of the GEM listing companies is fewer. Therefore, this paper is based on the companies listed on GEM. The board of directors is the most important internal governance mechanism, and has important influence on information disclosure level. So, how does the board of directors affect the voluntary information disclosure? How does voluntary information disclosure affect the enterprise value? This is the emphasis in this paper.In this paper, we take companies listed on GEM as samples, select 2010-2012 data for research. This paper builds model 1 to study the relationship between the level of voluntary information disclosure and board characteristics. The empirical results show that there are significant positive correlations between board size, board diligence degree, proportion of independent directors and the level of voluntary information disclosure. The age of chairman and the level of voluntary information disclosure are significant negative correlated. Board shareholding ratio, two staff unity and chairman with professional background do not pass the empirical test. Then, this paper builds model2 to research the relationship between the level of voluntary information disclosure and enterprise value. The results show that there is significant positive correlation between them.From the empirical results, we know that voluntary information disclosure is not only affected by the board characteristics, but also has value effect. So, companies listed on GEM must pay attention to voluntary information disclosure, improve the level of voluntary information disclosure by perfecting the board governance mechanisms, and eventually improve the enterprise value.