: The objective of this study is to investigate the effects of changes from Malaysia and Nigeria previous accounting standards to IFRSs-based standards on earnings management of Malaysia and Nigeria banks. Limited studies on the association between IFRS and earnings management in emerging economies and the continuous exclusion of financial institutions from samples of prior studies motivated this study to acquire the banking sector of two emerging countries – Malaysia and Nigeria in order to investigate whether changes in Malaysia and Nigeria accounting standards affects earnings management activities. Hence, this study used a sample of 23 banks representing 8 Malaysian banks and 15 Nigerian banks for a study period of 4 years (2009-2012). This study modified the Jones (1991) model to investigate earnings management in the banking sector. The modified Jones model is able to investigate earnings management in the banking sector. MFRSs and IFRSs impact more significantly and positively on the quality of accounting information of banks than the previous FRSs and SASs respectively for Malaysia and Nigeria. Specifically, the accrual and earnings quality of Nigerian banks has improved by approximately 41% and Malaysia banks 12.6% during the IFRSs/MFRSs adoption era. This study therefore recommends that globally, IFRSs should be adopted as the standard for the preparation and reporting of financial statements
Keywords: Accounting Standards, Discretionary Accruals, Earnings Management, Ifrss, Jones Model, Mfrss, Non-Discretionary Accruals, Total Accruals
