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This paper aims to investigate whether risk-related information is associated with a higher level of performance disclosure (PerfD) in the annual reports during the Covid-19 pandemic. Additionally, this paper assesses if ownership structure plays a moderating effect on the relationship between RD and PerfD.

A content analysis technique to measure the risk information and PerfD for 72 listed firms in the Abu Dhabi stock exchange and Dubai financial market for the period 2019–2021.

The authors find a significant correlation between risk disclosure and PerfD. Indeed, managers use annual reports to send a signal to the market about their abilities and skills in managing high-risk situations by disclosing more performance-related information accompanying any communicated related risk information. Besides, our results report that before the pandemic, only government ownership had a significant effect on the level of disclosure of performance-related information. However, during the pandemic, foreign ownership also played an important role to improve firm transparency. In addition, during the pandemic, Big 4 audit firms have effective quality control, and auditors would play an important role in improving the quality of disclosure. Besides, leveraged firms report more performance-related information. A high level of PerfD may play a critical role in mitigating debtholders’ concerns about firm’ ability to manage the pandemic situation and generate enough cash flows in the future to pay their debts.

This paper’s findings are highly relevant to financial reporting’ users, mainly shareholders, as they will be aware about management behaviors during the crisis and how firms are engaged in disclosure. Besides, this paper’s findings may be useful for market regulators to reinforce the role of audit quality to maintain good reporting, especially in crisis circumstances. In addition, regulators may benefit from the findings through the optimization of the ownership structure (dispersed ownership), which helps to promote transparency and disclosure.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the extent of narrative disclosure in the sustainability-integrated reports of listed companies in the UAE and its effect of firm’ performances. In 2020, The Securities and Commodities Authority issued a circular requiring all public joint stock companies listed on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX) or the Dubai Financial Market (DFM) to publish a sustainability report as part of their set of Integrated Reports.

Using all publicly available sustainability integrated reports of listed companies in DFM and ADX over the period 2018–2022, we first gather the report’s content by compiling a list of words using a computational linguistic technique that aims to identify specific characteristics of sustainability reports. Then, we use a GLS model to study the effect of the sustainability reporting on firm financial performance and risk.

The paper findings shows the level of sustainability disclosure of observed firms is noticeable. Besides, sustainability reporting has a significant effect on firm’s operational performance (ROA), financial performance (ROE) and market performance (Tobin’s Q). Nevertheless; it does not affect the financial risk.

Our study makes many contributions to the literature on corporate reporting. First, our analysis complements research that largely focuses on the financial disclosures in corporate reports by examining the sustainability-specific information and providing a full review of sustainability narratives. Second, by examining the effect of sustainability reports on shareholders' wealth, this article contributes to the current knowledge of sustainability reporting.

Our research offers several practical implications to policymakers, management, shareholders in different ways. The outcomes of this study helps policymakers to assess the effect of the Securities and Commodities Authority circular on the extent of sustainability related information disclosed in the integrated-report. It also helps the government to understand the level of environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure per sectors. Besides, this research findings give insight to managers to understand the effect of ESG disclosed information in the sustainability integrated report on firm financial and market performances. In addition, the paper findings assure shareholders of the positive impact on sustainability integrated-report on firm performance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no research has yet looked at the narratives of sustainability reports in the UAE context taking into account the different important aspects of these reports and its impact on firm performance and risk.