Abstract:

Financial statements constitute a basic form of communication between an entity and its environment, and they are the main source of information about an entity’s operations. Those statements become more and more extensive as a result of dynamic changes observed currently in today’s economic reality and leading to among others the emergence of particularly complex forms of conducting activity or concluding more and more complex transactions by entities. It is also a consequence of the changes in the financial reporting standards regulating the rules of their preparation. The standards adapting to the changes in the economic reality require presenting and disclosing a bigger amount of information. The aim of the study is to present the results of a study concerned with the changes in the length of financial statements of the biggest capital groups listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE) prepared in accordance with the solutions found in the International Accounting Standards (IAS) and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). For the purpose of the conducted study, the two following study hypotheses were formulated:

H1: The length of the financial statements of the biggest capital groups listed on the WSE increased in the years 2012-2018.

H2: The length of the financial statements depends on the size of a capital group which prepares it.