Gerenciamento de resultados contábeis nos períodos de troca do principal executivo (CEO) de companhias abertas no Brasil

Abstract

This study intends to verify the presence of earnings management (EM) in the periods surrounding CEO changes in Brazil. Earnings management can be defined as the use of managerial discretion when making accounting choices, within the limits of the standards, with the intention of producing a skewed view of the entity’s earnings to obtain gains. The work is classified as an explanatory research, with a quantitative and empirical approach, and uses the financial results of 227 companies listed on the BM&FBOVESPA between 2010 and 2016. For the CEO who is leaving the company, the reasons for undertaking earnings management include, among others, the possible need to hide a poor performance, obtain financial advantages, and build a successful professional image. In the case of the CEO who enters the company, the EM can be used to establish a depressed earnings base in the year of his/her entry, improving the conditions to present an evolution of earnings in later years. In order to verify these hypotheses, two EM detection models based on accruals were used, the modified Jones and the modified Jones with ROA. The results of the study demonstrate that, although there is no evidence that the average EM level is influenced by the CEO being in his/her last year in office, there was a statistically significant presence of earnings management in the first year of the incoming CEO with the intention of reducing reported profits, confirming the hypothesis of creating a depressed comparison basis so that the earnings of subsequent years are analyzed more favorably.