The Relationship between Ownership Structure and Conservatism of Companies in Iran

Purpose - Since Iran's economy is only now developing, and its stock market is only now emerging, we should deal with the relationship between ownership structure and conservative accounting of companies to see whether such a relationship exists in Iran's market. This study aims to investigate the relationship between ownership structure and accounting conservatism of listed companies on the Tehran Stock Exchange. Research design, data, and methodology - All listed companies on the Tehran Stock Exchange, for which the required information financial statements (balance sheet, profit and loss account) could be acquired for the period 2007-2012, were studied. A total of 123 companies from various industries was selected. Results - In order to test the hypotheses, multi variate regression (inter procedure), with their meaningful t- and f-statistics, and a Durbin-Watson autocorrelation model were used. Conclusions - The research results show that the ownership of major shareholders and ownership concentration have a negative significant relationship with accounting conservatism. Therefore, as a significant negative relationship between concentration of ownership and accounting conservatism at the 95% confidence level was found, the second hypothesis was confirmed.