Panel on the
Usefulness-of-real-time-information
Miklos Vasarhelyi, the father of continuous auditing, argues that corporate and investor decision-making needs real-time not anachronistic and biased information. Business measurement and assurance are essential not only for the effective functioning of public markets but also for quality corporate management. Although companies have extensive ERP’s that provide a large scope of information, only a very narrow information set, biased by FASB rules, is public. Furthermore, automatic trading (about 85% of trades) is using an even larger set of exogenous and endogenous (when available) variables for decisions that are made in milliseconds. His presentation and discussion will present a framework and ideas for real-time entity information.
However, a recent research report on the usefulness of real-time information, funded and published by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland, finds that many capital market participants are skeptical about the value of real time information. You can access the report at: usefulness of real-time information research study.
Mark Aleksanyan, one of the authors of this report, will summarize and discuss findings from this recently published study on potential usefulness of, and demand for, real-time information – as perceived by professional investors and sell-side analysts.
Specifically, the discussion will focus on:
- investors’ and analysts’ perceptions and usage of real-time / higher-frequency information in their practice of analysis of company performance, equity valuation and investment decision-making;
- analysts’ and investors’ current and future perceived demand for real-time information in general, and corporate-reported information in particular; and
- users’ perspectives on the need for a new corporate reporting and assurance paradigm.
Gerald Trites, who authored an influential research study on Electronic Filing and Reporting as well as many other publications on the impact of information technology on business, accounting and assurance, and who is currently editor-in-chief of ThinkTwenty20 magazine, will weigh in on the need for real-time reporting in today’s world.