This study explores Corporate Risk Disclosure practices (CRD) in the
annual reports of Saudi (non-financial) listed companies and
investigates the relationship between the Saudi firm-specific
characteristics and the level of such practices. Using content analysis
of a sample of 307 company-year observations over the period of
2008-2011, the results indicate that Saudi Arabia provides a moderate
level of CRD among the developed and developing countries. However, the
content of this CRD is found to be of a low quality, by including
non-financial, qualitative, neutral, or non-time-specific information.
In addition, the unbalanced panel regression analysis shows a
significant positive influence of firm size and audit firm size on the
level of CRD. This indicates that Saudi companies which disclose higher
risk-related information are those characterised by their larger size,
and are audited by the Big 4 audit firms. This study contributes to the
risk literature by providing an initial understanding of the CRD
practices and their variations in light of the firm-specific
characteristics in emerging markets in general and Arab countries in
particular.