Corporate financial reporting in Qatar: a study of individual investors’ assessment of annual reports

Abstract

In this paper, an attempt is made to investigate a particular group of investors – namely individual investors’ perceptions of corporate annual reports in Qatar. A total of 400 surveys were distributed to individual investors based in Qatar. Surveys were distributed over a period of two months. The response rate was 89% (356 returned surveys), with 313 usable questionnaires (78.25%). Findings show that annual reports represent a very important source of information for investors. Almost 67% of the respondents see annual reports as a very important source of information to assess company’s performance and for investment decisions. Compared to other company’s sources of information annual reports rank first. Similar to Al-Attar and Al-Khater (2008), investors rank the set of financial statements on the top. The balance sheet is ranked first. Income statement and cash flow statement are also important and ranked receptively third and second. Auditor’s report comes in the fourth position. The results of this study comfort well the idea that the financial reporting environment in Qatar is evolving at the image of the country.