the use of IAS and US GAAP. An English language annual report for the
1999–2000 financial year was requested from the largest 150 companies (by
market capitalization) in each country based on the Datastream (2000)
database. The use of English language reports means that the companies in
the study are more international. It is not a bias since the study aims to
include international companies. Companies not included in the largest
150 but named on foreign company lists obtained from stock exchanges in
the five countries were also contacted. In most foreign listing categories, all
the annual reports received were included. Where more than 30 reports
were received (for the NYSE group in the UK, and for the OTC group in
the UK, Japan and Australia) a random selection of reports was made. For
domestic-only listed companies, a random selection (by country) was made
from the reports received so that the number of domestic-only listed
companies was the same as the number of foreign listed companies for each
country. The total number of companies in each country’s sample varies
because each country has a different number of foreign listed companies.
Table 3 shows the number of sample companies as a proportion of the
number of listed companies for each country and stock exchange listing
category.