Earnings quality is still an important issue for private firms. Their incentives in managing
financial statements may be different from those of public companies but are still present.
Privately held firms have more concentrated ownership and major capital providers
often have insider access to corporate information so earnings would not have to be as
informative about the true economic performance. Bank is usually the major source of
external funds in privately held companies, resulting in agency conflicts between bankers
and owners/management (Vander Bauwhede & Willekens, 2004), which could also create
earnings management incentives, exacerbated in the case of earnings-based debt
covenants.3