Bovespa corporate governance levels and information disclosure to the market: a comparison of business combination disclosures in explanatory notes

In this study, the disclosure of information associated with Corporate Governance based on the listing segments of the São Paulo Stock Exchange (Bovespa) is focused on through the disclosure of business combinations in the annual financial statements. Based on Technical Pronouncement CPC 15, the explanatory notes to the statements for 2012 of companies listed on Bovespa were analyzed, considering the distinguished listing segments, to investigate whether the segments with higher governance levels would also present a higher disclosure level. The information published was analyzed descriptively in terms of type: simple, descriptive and detailed, including statistical confirmation by means of the Mann-Whitney test to compare the New and Traditional Market segments and the Wilcoxon test to compare the information blocks. No significant differences were found in the disclosure level attributed to the governance, but the level of disclosure dropped as the complexity of the required information increased. The results indicate greater sensitivity to the type of information related to the listing segments, an approach applicable to other normative pronouncements or other Corporate Governance indicators.