Relationship between Ownership Structures and Earnings Management Behavior in Vietnamese Commercial Banks

Earnings management behavior is the use of accounting procedures, through accounting policies, to intentionally purposeful control in the provision of information to users. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between ownership structure factors and earnings management behavior of 30 Vietnamese commercial banks. The paper uses the ordinary least square method to examine this relationship and employs time series data of 15 years from 2005 to 2019. The study also uses agency theory an asymmetric information theory. The authors examined six independent variables related to the ownership structure and these variables are typical of Vietnamese commercial banks. The results of the study show that the foreign ownership ratio is an opposite effect, while the ownership concentration variable has a positive effect on earnings management behavior of Vietnamese commercial banks. Based on that, the article proposes a number of policy suggestions for the State bank of Vietnam and Board of directors of commercial banks as well as investors to identify and to limit the earnings management behaviors of Vietnamese commercial banks. This contributes to ensuring information transparency as well as improving the quality of accounting information of Vietnamese commercial banks in the coming years.