TY - THES A1 - Fischer, Luca Cedric T1 - An Empirical Investigation on the Transparency of Capital Costs in the Annual Report among the DAX40 Companies N2 - This study identifies the transparency levels of the DAX40 companies regarding their disclosure of capital costs. With reference to a theoretical foundation, capital cost theory and its origins are outlined, while the respective financial reporting standards according to IFRS and HGB are discussed. In the matter of preliminary step before examining the annual reports of the mentioned German companies, transparency in financial reporting is critically assessed in an in-depth literature review. The topics of efficiency of transparency, motives for transparency variations and consequences of transparency for companies are included. As a result, five hypotheses were derived that build the basis for the subsequent empirical case study. Thus, H1 expects most of the companies within the DAX to not transparently publish their capital costs within their annual reports. H2 expects that none of the DAX companies are transparent about their calculation scheme and application regarding the beta coefficient. H3 assumes that most companies listed in the DAX are inconsistent with their capital costs used for the Impairment Only Approach compared to the capital costs communicated in the management report. H4 predicts that most DAX companies are not publishing separate WACC’s and derivation of capital cost parameters along their business units. Finally, H5 expects the ten new joiners within the DAX to be more transparent and consistent regarding their publication of capital costs and calculation schemes than their 30 peers. Ultimately, H1, H3, and H5 were rejected, while H2 and H4 were confirmed Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:hbz:1383-opus4-13679 ER -