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An investigation into Internet financial reporting carried out in June 2005 that focused on stock-market listed Croatian and Slovene joint-stock companies has two basic aspects, comparative and explanatory. The comparative aspect of the research showed that Slovene corporations have a statistically significant higher level of financial reporting (as measured with IFR score). The average IFR score for 55 corporate entities from Croatia came to just 6.85, while the average IFR score for 30 Slovene firms was 17.63. The second aspect of the investigation was explanatory, and at the level of each state and sample the intention was to find the variables that affect IFR scores significantly. With respect to the Croatian sample it was shown that the IFR score was statistically significantly and positively correlated with size, profitability, number of shareholders, and amount of traffic on the stock markets. Then regression analysis showed that majority foreign ownership had a positive effect on the IFR score. A statistically significant but negative correlation was established for two sectors, tourism and marine transport. For the Slovene sample, comprising 30 firms, the size, profitability and number of stockholders were not significant variables. However, official listing, proportion of market capitalisation and ratio of market to book values of shares were statistically significantly and positively correlated with the IFR score. Only one sector, transport, was significantly and negatively correlated with the IFR score.

In the last ten years, the Internet and applications of it have been increasingly widely employed in modern business operations. In developed countries, the Internet is used with increasing frequency for financial reporting. And accordingly a large amount of academic research has been done into the area. Since no such research has yet been carried out in Croatia, it is a research area that is undoubtedly of interest. This investigation was carried out on a basic sample of 38 joint stock companies quoted on Croatian bourses, the shares of all of them being actively traded. The results showed that twenty of the companies made use of Internet financial reporting and eighteen had no such practice. Companies that use Internet financial reporting on the whole publish the annual reports together with the reports of their auditors. In addition, most of the companies use the PDF format for the reports that they publish. Empirical data show that the firms that use Internet financial reporting are on the whole larger and more profitable, and that their shares are more active on the bourses than the shares of companies that have no such reporting practice. Also established was a statistically significant propensity among financial institutions to use Internet reporting. Joint stock companies in the tourist sector were shown not to have a propensity for Internet financial reporting. Bearing in mind the expected growth of GDP, the growth of the capital market, with the constant growth in the number of Internet users, investment in financial reporting on the Internet could be a useful decision for joint stock companies that wish to enhance the transparency of their operations.