Anti-bribery information: Extent and impact on banking performance of UAE Islamic and conventional banks

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to explore the extent of anti-bribery disclosures in the annual reports of the banks listed on UAE financial markets by differentiating between Islamic and conventional banks and examine the effect of anti-bribery disclosure on bank’s performance.

Design/methodology/approach

This study uses in the first stage the content analysis to explore the extent of anti-bribery disclosure in the annual reports of the banks. In the second stage, the dynamic panel two-step robust system has been applied to study the impact of the anti-bribery disclosure on banking performance.

Findings

The empirical results show that the anti-bribery disclosure is at low levels for all banks and that there are no significant differences in overall anti-bribery disclosure between the two banking systems while there are significant differences in “anti-bribery human resources practices” between Islamic and conventional banks. The dynamic panel data results show that the association between the anti-bribery disclosure and the bank’s performance is not significant as this kind of information is not clearly disclosed in the annual reports of the banks.

Research limitations/implications

The study suggests to the UAE central bank and financial markets regulators to design a framework of anti-corruption disclosure by considering the international anti-corruption regime as an effort to respond to the international development of the bribery practices.

Originality/value

Anti-bribery concerns all the banks over the world and this research is the first study that constructs an index to measure the anti-bribery disclosure and helps in providing the status of the banking industry in terms of anti-bribery disclosure within an emerging market in the objective to improve the transparency in combatting the bribery.

Citation

Nobanee, H. and Ellili, N. (2020), "Anti-bribery information: Extent and impact on banking performance of UAE Islamic and conventional banks", Journal of Financial Crime, Vol. 27 No. 2, pp. 683-695. https://doi.org/10.1108/JFC-11-2019-0144