Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to ascertain whether Portuguese banks use their web sites as a medium to disclose social responsibility information and identify what types of this kind of information they disclose, and compare such disclosure with similar disclosure in annual reports. Design/methodology/approach – Examines social responsibility information disclosure on the internet by Portuguese banks in 2004 and compares the internet and 2003 annual reports as disclosure media using content analysis. Findings – Banks with a higher visibility among consumers seem to exhibit greater concern to improve the corporate image through social responsibility information disclosure. Results thus suggest that legitimacy theory may be an explanation of social responsibility disclosure by Portuguese banks. Research limitations/implications – The sample is small, although it is constituted by all the relevant Portuguese banks. Originality/value – Contributes to the scarce literature on social responsibility disclosure by financial institutions. A proxy for public visibility of banks which has not been previously used is proposed in this study.

Purpose: This paper seeks to identify factors that influence the voluntary disclosure of intangibles information in annual reports of Portuguese listed companies.Design/methodology/approach: An index of the voluntary disclosure of intangibles is constructed based on analysis of the Management Report and Chairman's Letter of all 56 companies listed on Euronext Lisbon at 31 December 2003. Several hypotheses about associations between that index and eight firm‐specific variables are tested.Findings: The voluntary reporting of intangibles is found to be influenced significantly by size, ownership concentration, type of auditor, industry and listing status in univariate analysis; and by size, industry, type of auditor, and ownership concentration (and listing status to a lesser extent) in multivariate analyses.Research limitations/implications: This study focuses on annual reports only, and is cross‐sectional. The use of content analysis and the subjective judgment involved in constructing the index cannot be view uncritically. The small sample size is inevitable because of the small Portuguese capital market.Practical implications: Accounting regulators will be better able to understand the factors that explain the voluntary disclosure of intangibles by firms and use this in developing future recommendations.Originality/value: The paper validates some previous research and also provides insights to the firm‐specific factors that explain voluntary disclosure of intangibles by companies operating in the small share market of a European country in which capital market fund raising is not regarded to be an important source of financing.