The Value Relevance of IFRS in the European Banking Industry

We investigate the market valuation of accounting information in the European banking industry before and after the adoption of IFRS, the latest version of International Accounting Standards (IAS). In a value relevance framework, we apply panel methods to a multiplicative interaction model, in which the partial effects of earnings and book value on share prices are conditional on the adoption of IFRS. According to our evidence, the IFRS introduction enhanced the information content of both earnings and book value for more transparent banks. By contrast, less transparent entities did not experience significant increase in the value relevance of book value.