THE RESPONSE OF STATUTORY FINANCIAL AUDITORS IN THE UK TO ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES: A DESCRIPTIVE AND EXPLORATORY CASE STUDY

This paper explores the reaction of UK financial auditors to the growth of society's environmental awareness and attendant legislative pressures. The developing regulatory framework of auditing is briefly reviewed from an environmental perspective but the main contribution of the paper is to report the results of a series of interviews with a range of audit practitioners. The aim of the interviews was to explore: how, if at all, the conduct of the audit is changing (or, in the opinion of those interviewed, should change) in the light of environmental concerns: whether more training and guidance from professional bodies is sought; and views on regulation. Interviewees' experiences and their views of the impact of increasing environmental awareness and regulation on the statutory audit are reported and discussed. In addition, their views concerning a possible widening of their attestation role to encompass environmental reports are explored.     

科学监管引领银行巨变

近年来,中国银行业成为国际金融危机风暴中的“一枝独秀”：资产规模扩大4倍多,不良贷款率降至1．0％以下,资本充足率达到12．9％,核心资本充足率达到10．4％……我国银行业资产质量持续提高,风险抵御能力不断增强的背后,离不开银行业自身艰苦卓绝的努力,也与中国银监会科学有效的监管密不可分。     

CHANGES IN MARKET PERCEPTION OF RISKINESS: THE CASE OF TOO-BIG-TO-FAIL

In 1984, the Comptroller of the Currency stated that the eleven largest banking firms were “too big to fail,” implying they would receive de facto 100 percent deposit insurance. The question is whether this announcement altered the market's perception of the riskiness of all banking organizations, not just those included in the Comptroller's statement. We address this question with two tests. First, through the examination of changes in institutional equity ownership from 1980 through 1988, we find that the announcement is associated with increases in institutional ownership at a time when a comparable set of nonfinancial firms saw reductions in institutional holdings. Second, through the examination of stock returns behavior of bank holding companies around announcements of dividend cuts and omissions from 1974 through 1991, we find that the Comptroller's 1984 announcement altered the market's reaction to dividend cuts and omissions by bank holding companies not specifically included in the Comptroller's statement.     

THE ROLE OF CAPITAL ADEQUACY REGULATION IN THE HEDGING DECISIONS OF FINANCIAL INTERMEDIARIES

This paper identifies the effect of capital adequacy requirements, which have been ignored to date in the hedging literature, on the forward hedging decisions of financial intermediaries. Using a more general framework than has been used in the literature on intermediary behavior in forward markets, cases are developed where capital and forward contracting are substitutes as well as where increasing the capital requirement increases the volume of desired forward contracting. The model shows that the most important factors in determining the equilibrium rate and the equilibrium position of intermediaries are the statistical association between the level of the forward rate and the spread between interest rates, the level of the capital-to-assets ratio, and the degree of risk aversion of intermediaries and other participants in the forward market. To characterize whether the intermediary's optimal forward position is long or short, one must have knowledge of at least the sign of the association between the level and spread for the particular intermediary, the intermediary's capital position, and whether the forward market equilibrium corresponds to a positive or negative premium. The model also demonstrates that a full hedge of assets is always sub-optimal, and a universally applicable expression for the optimal hedge ratio when hedging is costless is derived.     

THE EXAMINATION OF DIRECTORS‘ REPORTS BY AUDITORS: FURTHER EVIDENCE

Knowledge of the practices of auditors in examining directors' reports of their Australian client corporations should provide useful insights for users of directors' reports, legislators and the professional accounting bodies.     

国际金融监管变革对中国金融业的启示

国际货币基金组织总裁卡恩曾说过,＂世界经济正在企稳好转,但依然高度脆弱。因此,各经济体仍需重视风险,加强监管,而金融领域的风险管理尤其重要。＂在全球经济金融一体化持续推进的背景下,各主要经济体和国际组织共同推动的全球金融监管改革将对全球金融业的发展产生重大影响。     

MARKET ANTICIPATION OF CORPORATE FAILURE IN THE UK

In practice it seems that the identification of impending failure is a much more gradual process than appears to be implied by discriminant and similar models. This paper, after examining the methodological problems associated with such research and reviewing previous work in this area, reports the behaviour of share price relatives of 20 British companies which failed between 1960 and 1971. It appears that on average analysts began to perceive a fum's financial difficulties some five years prior to bankruptcy, which would seem to support the view that the market refers to a broad data set in assessing a company's solvency position.     

TEMPORAL CHANGES IN THE DETERMINANTS OF MUTUAL FUND FLOWS

We examine how the relation between mutual fund performance and fund flows has changed over time by separating our sample into two periods (1978–87 and 1988–97). We document an increase in the flow‐performance asymmetry in the second period that exacerbates the adverse incentive for fund managers to increase portfolio risk. We develop a measure of the elasticity of fund flows with respect to performance, which filters out the confounding influence of greater aggregate fund flows in the second period and allows an examination of whether current investors place more emphasis on prior performance when selecting funds. We conclude that, though top performing funds are rewarded with greater fund flows in the second half of our sample, the change is due solely to the increase in aggregate fund flows and not to an increased reliance on performance by individual fund investors. JEL classification: G1, G2, L1.     

INSTITUTIONAL TRADING AND SECURITY PRICES: THE CASE OF CHANGES IN THE COMPOSITION OF THE S&P 500 INDEX

This paper examines the common stock valuation and liquidity effects of firms being added to and deleted from the S&P 500 Index. Three potential pricing and trading volume hypotheses are discussed and tested—an Information Content Hypothesis (ICH), a Price Pressure Hypothesis (PPH), and a Liquidity Cost Hypothesis (LCH). The empirical findings indicate that firms being added to (deleted from) the S&P 500 Index over the 1977 to 1983 period experience positive (negative) abnormal common stock returns on the day following the addition. An analysis of common stock liquidity around additions to the Index reveals that while relative trading activity increases in the month of addition, it actually declines in subsequent months. The valuation and liquidity results are consistent to some degree with both the PPH and the LCH and are most likely due to index fund managers adjusting their holdings to reflect changes in the Index.     

MEASURING THE COST OF CAPITAL IN AN INTERNATIONAL CAPM FRAMEWORK

This paper can be viewed as extending the traditional CAPM framework in two important ways. The first expands the concept of the market portfolio to include international securities. The second extends the definition of systematic risk to include currency risk.
What becomes clear in estimating the cost of capital for an international asset is that both extensions have become necessary if the traditional CAPM is to remain relevant. International markets have become increasingly integrated over the past two decades and so all assets might now be considered international and priced accordingly. The inclusion of the currency risk factor is not an ad hoc addition to the CAPM but rather results quite naturally from the fact that foreign returns need to be converted into a domestic currency.
Based on an examination of 18 companies, the article shows that the use of a broader market portfolio will tend to lower the estimated cost of capital for most firms, but in some cases could actually raise it. (In the case of Singapore Airlines, for example, the currency risk factor adds substantially to the cost of capital, while materially reducing it in the case of Nestlé.) Using a simple regression, the authors also attempt to show how the specifics of a particular company—for example, the currencies that are part of their cost/ revenue structure—determine the impact of currency risk on the cost of capital.     

SOME EVIDENCE ON THE EFFICACY OF SECURITY CREDIT REGULATION IN THE OTC EQUITY MARKET

Security credit regulations are administered by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors (Fed) as a result of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These regulations extend to individual over-the-counter (OTC) firms via the 1969 Amendment to that Act. Apart from catastrophe prevention, five objectives for extending these regulations to OTC stocks are articulated by the Fed. This paper provides empirical evidence on the efficacy of three of the objectives. The evidence suggests the Fed has been successful in pursuing its objectives.     

THE EFFICIENCY OF THE INTERNATIONAL MONEY MARKETS: A REPLY

In their original article, McInish and Puglisi (1982) examine the weak form efficiency of nineteen international money market instruments using a runs test. Taylor asserts that on theoretical grounds other tests would have been better. McInish and Puglisi argue that their tests were satisfactory and that until empirical evidence is offered the economic significance of Taylor's claims is uncertain (at best).     

THE EFFICIENCY OF THE INTERNATIONAL MONEY MARKETS: A COMMENT

McInish and Puglisi reccntly claimed that weak form efficiency should be tested by runs tests and not autocorrelation tests, when returns are not Normal. It is the opinion of this author however, that autocorrelation tests are not invalidated by a non-Normal distribution. Furthermore, it can be shown that the runs test has lower power than autocorrelation tests and ihat the runs test is not preferable.