ESG Integration in Investment Management: Myths and Realities

The number of public companies reporting ESG information grew from fewer than 20 in the early 1990s to 8,500 by 2014. Moreover, by the end of 2014, over 1,400 institutional investors that manage some $60 trillion in assets had signed the UN Principles for Responsible Investment (UNPRI). Nevertheless, companies with high ESG “scores” have continued to be viewed by mainstream investors as unlikely to produce competitive shareholder returns, in part because of the findings of older studies showing low returns from the social responsibility investing of the 1990s. But studies of more recent periods suggest that companies with significant ESG programs have actually outperformed their competitors in a number of important ways. The authors’ aim in this article is to set the record straight on the financial performance of sustainable investing while also correcting a number of other widespread misconceptions about this rapidly growing set of principles and methods: Myth Number 1: ESG programs reduce returns on capital and long‐run shareholder value. Reality: Companies committed to ESG are finding competitive advantages in product, labor, and capital markets; and portfolios that have integrated “material” ESG metrics have provided average returns to their investors that are superior to those of conventional portfolios, while exhibiting lower risk. Myth Number 2: ESG is already well integrated into mainstream investment management. Reality: The UNPRI signatories have committed themselves only to adhering to a set of principles for responsible investment, a standard that falls well short of integrating ESG considerations into their investment decisions. Myth Number 3: Companies cannot influence the kind of shareholders who buy their shares, and corporate managers must often sacrifice sustainability goals to meet the quarterly earnings targets of increasingly short‐term‐oriented investors. Reality: Companies that pursue major sustainability initiatives, and publicize them in integrated reports and other communications with investors, have also generally succeeded in attracting disproportionate numbers of longer‐term shareholders. Myth Number 4: ESG data for fundamental analysis is scarce and unreliable. Reality: Thanks to the efforts of reporting and investor organizations such as SASB and Ceres, and of CDP data providers like Bloomberg and MSCI, much more “value‐relevant” ESG data on companies has become available in the past ten years. Myth Number 5: ESG adds value almost entirely by limiting risks. Reality: Along with lower risk and a lower cost of capital, companies with high ESG scores have also experienced increases in operating efficiency and expansions into new markets. Myth Number 6: Consideration of ESG factors might create a conflict with fiduciary duty for some investors. Reality: Many ESG factors have been shown to have positive correlations with corporate financial performance and value, prompting ERISA in 2015 to reverse its earlier instructions to pension funds about the legitimacy of taking account of “non‐financial” considerations when investing in companies.     

Stock Prices and the Supply of Information

We develop a model in which the dependence of the brokerage commission rate on share price provides an incentive for brokers to produce research reports on firms with low share prices. Stock splits therefore affect the attention paid to a firm by investment analysts. Managers with favorable private information about their firms have an incentive to split their firm's shares in order to reveal the information to investors. We find empirical evidence that is consistent with the major new prediction of the model, that the number of analysts following a firm is inversely related to its share price.     

The impact of CSR performance and CSR disclosure readability on investors’ earnings estimates

We investigate how the valence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance and the readability of CSR disclosure impact investors’ earnings estimates. Ninety-seven part-time MBA students participate in an experiment, in which we manipulate the valence of CSR performance (positive versus neutral) and the readability of CSR reports (high versus low), while holding financial information constant. Our findings reveal that investors make more positive earnings estimates when CSR performance is positive. The readability level of CSR reports also influences investors’ decision-making process. Moreover, by using an eye-tracking device, we are able to observe investors’ different reading behaviours upon the different levels of readability.     

海外企业社会责任信息披露研究综述及启示

研究发现，企业进行社会信息披露的外在驱动因素主要有两种：一是来自规章制度和立法的压力；二是来自投资者及其他利益相关者对企业社会责任信息的需求。而企业进行社会责任信息披露的内在影响因素主要有：成本和利益、战略、企业绩效、公司规模、行业属性等。当前国外企业社会责任信息披露实践和理论研究成果主要表现在企业社会责任信息披露能够给企业资本市场行为带来的利益，如较高的股价、较低的股票风险和较低的资本成本，而且，随着投资者对企业社会责任信息需求的增多，投资者关系的内涵也在扩展，与投资者沟通企业社会责任信息已成为国外企业的发展趋势。     

Who Disciplines Management in Poorly Performing Companies?

Economic theory points to five parties disciplining management of poorly performing firms: holders of large share blocks, acquirers of new blocks, bidders in takeovers, nonexecutive directors, and investors during periods of financial distress. This paper reports the first comparative evaluation of the role of these different parties in disciplining management. We find that, in the United Kingdom, most parties, including holders of substantial share blocks, exert little disciplining and that some, for example, inside holders of share blocks and boards dominated by nonexecutive directors, actually impede it. Bidders replace a high proportion of management of companies acquired in takeovers but do not target poorly performing management. In contrast, during periods of financial constraints prompting distressed rights issues and capital restructuring, investors focus control on poorly performing companies. These results stand in contrast to the United States, where there is little evidence of a role for new equity issues but nonexecutive directors and acquirers of share blocks perform a disciplinary function. The different governance outcomes are attributed to differences in minority investor protection in two countries with supposedly similar common law systems. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Number: G3.     

Stock returns and future tense language in 10-K reports

This paper shows that firms talking less about the future in their annual reports generate positive abnormal returns of about 5% annually. I measure how much companies talk about the future in their annual 10-K reports by the frequency of the verbs will, shall, and going to. The evidence favors a risk-based interpretation: firms that use less future tense in their report offer higher returns since they are riskier. These results are consistent with finance theories stating that investors need to be rewarded for holding stocks of firms that put less information about the future in the marketplace.     

DIVERGENT EXPECTATIONS AND THE ASIAN FINANCIAL CRISIS OF 1997

An important question concerning integration of global financial markets is whether local investors in an equity market react differently from international investors, particularly during periods of financial crisis. Considering local investors are closer to information, they might turn pessimistic before foreign investors before a crisis. We examine whether local investors in each of the six Asian stock markets—Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Thailand—reacted differently from international investors during the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Our empirical results indicate that, in general, closed‐end country fund share prices (mainly driven by foreign investors) Granger‐cause the respective net asset values (NAVs, mainly driven by local investors). Moreover, this one‐way Granger‐causality effect from share prices to NAVs becomes much stronger during the crisis period after controlling for U.S. stock returns. Our results suggest international investors turned pessimistic before local investors. JEL classification: G15     

Accounting earnings response coefficient: An extension to banking shares in Asia Pacific countries

This paper reports new finding on earnings response coefficients for banking firms on how disclosures on total earnings and disaggregated fee earnings are used by investors to change share prices prior to earnings disclosures. The information relating to total earnings influences share prices significantly in all four banking sectors studied, all of which have sufficiently liberalized capital markets. Australian investors appear to use information on disaggregated non-interest fee income to revise share prices significantly: not so in other markets. The investors in Malaysia and South Korea appear to consider changes in fee income as bad news with negative price impact, anomalous to theory. The Australian investors appear to regard both total and fee incomes as equally important whereas investors in other markets either ignore or consider changes in fee income as bad news for share valuation. This study extends the literature on this topic from non-bank to banking firms.     

Earnings Trend and Performance Relative to Benchmarks: How Consistency Influences Their Joint Use

Archival research shows that the market reacts to earnings trend as well as to earnings performance relative to analysts' forecasts (i.e., benchmark performance). We conduct four experiments to investigate how and why investors react to these two measures when both are available over multiple time periods. Our results show that investors rely on an earnings measure only when it is consistent over time. When both measures are consistent over time, investors use them in an additive fashion, suggesting that they view them as providing different information about the firm. Further tests show that investors believe that earnings trend and benchmark performance both provide information about a firm's future prospects and management's credibility. Although judged future prospects fully explain the effect of earnings trend on investor judgments, neither judged future prospects nor management credibility completely explains the effect of benchmark performance. Our study has implications for firm managers and researchers.     

Liars Never Prosper? How Management Misrepresentation Reduces Monitoring Costs

When monitoring is not contractible—so investors monitor only when, at that time, they expect to benefit from doing so—efficient contracts sometimes induce managers to makefalsereports to investors. Because of monitoring discretion, management misrepresentation can produce Pareto improvements by reducing monitoring costs. When costs of renegotiation are small, optimal contracts necessarily induce misrepresentation. Discretionary monitoring also generates an equilibrium role for multiple-security capital structures. When an optimal contract has two investors, securityholder conflict arises endogenously as a means of reducing monitoring costs. It is efficient to write the contract so that one investor's decision to monitor hurts the other investor.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Number: G32.     

Reporting Frequency, Information Precision and Private Information Acquisition

Abstract:  This study examines whether the choice between quarterly and semiannual reporting affects the precision of investors' information and their private information acquisition activities. In the first part of this study, we show that a firm's reporting frequency has no effect on the average precision of investors' information. However, our analysis of announcement-period price variance and share turnover shows that an increase in reporting frequency does make interim and annual financial reports a more important component of investors' information set, relative to other sources of information. In particular, the results of this analysis suggest that investors of semiannual reporters hold more precise pre-announcement information than investors of quarterly reporters. In the second part of our study, we test one explanation for this finding. We argue that an increase in a firm's reporting frequency reduces investors' incentives to acquire private information between consecutive announcement dates and, consequently, should reduce information asymmetry among investors, increase share liquidity, and stimulate trading. Consistent with this reasoning, we find that quarterly reporters have lower average bid-ask spreads and higher abnormal share turnover than semiannual reporters.     

Risk and Regulation in Derivatives (or Why Derivatives Are a Blessing,Not a Curse)

In this article, first published in 1994, the authors aimed to defuse the widespread hysteria about derivatives fueled by media accounts (like Fortune magazine's cover story in the same year) by offering a systematic analysis of the risks to companies, investors, and the entire financial system associated with the operation of the relatively new derivatives markets. Such analysis ended up providing assurances like the following:

• As long as most companies are using derivatives mainly to limit their financial exposures and not to enlarge them in efforts to pad their operating profits, reported losses on derivatives should not be a matter for concern. “Complaining about losses on a swap used to hedge a firm's exposure,” as the authors note, “is like objecting to the costs of a fire insurance policy if the building doesn't burn down.”
• To the extent that companies are using derivatives to hedge—and what evidence we have suggests that most are—the default risk of derivatives has been greatly exaggerated. An interest rate swap used by a B‐rated company to hedge a large exposure to interest rates will generally have significantly less default risk than a AAA‐rated corporate bond issue.
• Thanks to the corporate use of derivatives, much of the impact of economic shocks such as spikes in interest rates or oil prices is being transferred away from the hedging companies to investors and other companies better able to absorb them. And in this fashion, defaults in the economy as a whole, and hence systemic risk, are effectively being reduced, not increased, through the operation of the derivatives markets.

Moreover, the authors warn in closing that the likely effect of then proposed derivatives regulation would be to restrict access to and increase the costs to companies of using derivatives markets. As one example, the excessive capital requirements associated with derivatives facing bank dealers—based on gross rather than net measures of exposure—and which regulators have since proposed extending to nonbank dealers—were expected to have the unintended effect of encouraging dealers to sell precisely the kinds of riskier, leveraged derivatives that Bankers Trust sold Procter & Gamble, and that functioned as Exhibit A in the Fortune article.     

An Unconventional Conglomerateur: Henry Singleton and Teledyne

Capital allocation involves decisions about raising and returning capital, and about acquiring and selling companies—all of which can have major effects on shareholder value. Rather than judging CEOs by growth in revenues or earnings, the author argues that they should be judged by increases in the per share value of the companies they manage and also in comparison with the returns generated by peer firms and the broader market. Successful CEOs have been able to overcome the “institutional imperative”—the tendency of managers to focus on the sheer size of their enterprises and to avoid doing things that might be seen as unconventional. In this chapter from his recent book, The Outsiders, which provides accounts of eight remarkably successful and long‐tenured CEOs, the author describes the successful management by Henry Singleton of the conglomerate Teledyne from 1963 to 1990, a period during which the company's shareholders enjoyed annualized returns of over 20%. During the 1960s, the company produced high returns mainly by making large acquisitions funded by new equity issues. During the 1970s and '80s, by contrast, Teledyne used massive share repurchases to return excess capital to shareholders. Thus, Singleton adjusted his capital allocation strategy in response to changes in product and financial markets—and to changes in the perceived difference between market and intrinsic values. When investors provided capital with relatively low required rates of return, as in the 1960s, Singleton was an aggressive buyer investor in a wide range of businesses. But when interest rates were high and equity valuations were low, as in the 1970s and early 1980s, Singleton used share repurchases to create value by reducing investment and limiting growth. The company's shareholders were well rewarded in both environments.     

Market Behavior of Institutional Investors around Bankruptcy Announcements

This paper examines, using proprietary ASX data containing institutional holdings, if institutional investors exit en mass prior to announcements of financial distress. Evidence indicates that while some institutional investors exit the stock, the withdrawal is gradual, commencing approximately 115 days prior to event. This is driven by active institutional investors reacting to the release of the financially distressed companies’ last publicly released financial reports. There is no significant decline in institutional holdings before announcements; most institutional investors hold financially distressed shares through to failure. There is evidence that the lack of disclosure drives the increase in information asymmetry prior to company failure.     

ESG Investing in Graham & Doddsville

The author describes how and why the world's best “business value investors” have long incorporated environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations into their investment decision‐making. As the main source of value in companies has increasingly shifted from tangible to intangible assets, many followers of Graham & Dodd have delivered exceptional investment results by taking an “earnings‐power” approach to identifying high‐quality businesses—businesses with enduring competitive advantages that are sustained through significant ongoing investment in their core capabilities and, increasingly, their important non‐investor “stakeholders.” While the ESG framework may be relatively new, it can be thought of as providing a lens through which to view the age‐old issue of “quality.” Graham & Dodd's 1934 classic guide to investing, Security Analysis, and Phil Fisher's 1958 bestseller, Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits, both identify a number of areas of analysis that would today be characterized as ESG. Regardless of whether they use the labels “E,” “S,” and “G,” investors who make judgments about earnings power and sustainable competitive advantage are routinely incorporating ESG considerations into their decision‐making. The challenge of assessing a company's sustainable competitive advantage requires analysis based on concepts such as customer franchise value, as well as intangibles like brands and intellectual property. For corporate managers communicating ESG priorities, and for investors analyzing ESG issues, the key is to focus on their relevance to the business. In this sense, corporate reporting on sustainability issues should be viewed as analogous to and an integral part of financial reporting, with a management focus on materiality and relevance (while avoiding a “promotional” approach) that is critical to credibility.     

R&D AND CAPITAL MARKETS

The substantial growth of R&D expenditures over the last two decades, together with the continuous substitution of knowledge (intangible) capital for physical (tangible) capital in corporate production functions, has elevated the importance of R&D in the performance of business enterprises. At the same time, however, the evaluation of corporate R&D activities by investors is seriously hampered by antiquated accounting rules and insufficient disclosure by corporations. Despite the fact that the expected benefits of R&D stretch over extended periods of time, corporate investments in R&D are immediately written off in financial reports, leaving no trace of R&D capital on balance sheets and causing material distortions of reported profitability. After a brief review of statistics documenting the growth and economic importance of corporate R&D in the U.S., the article presents a comparison of R&D disclosure regulations among industrialized nations that shows U.S. rules to be the least flexible in allowing management discretion in how they measure and report R&D. Next the author surveys the large and growing body of empirical research on R&D, which provides strong testimony to the substantial contribution of R&D to corporate productivity and shareholder value. Moreover, despite widespread allegations of stock market “short termism” throughout the 1980s and early '90s, the research indicates “unequivocally” that capital markets consider investments in R&D as a significant value-increasing activity. But if investors clearly demonstrate a willingness to take the long view of R&D, there is also evidence of undervaluation of some R&D-intensive companies—particularly those with low profitability—as well as other potential costs to corporations and investors stemming from inadequate public information about R&D. To help correct the reporting biases and distortions of R&D, the author offers some suggestions for investors and analysts that follow R&D-intensive companies. In particular, he proposes (1) adjustment of reported data to reflect the capitalization and amortization of (instead of expensing) corporate R&D and (2) the use of various quantitative measures for gauging research capabilities and output, including citations of the firm's patents and measures indicating the share of current revenues coming from products developed within recent years.     

IPO auctions and private information

IPO auctions, which provide an impartial way of determining IPO pricing and share allocations, offer a natural setting for examining whether institutional investors possess private information, and for measuring how valuable their information is. Analyzing detailed bidding data from Taiwan’s discriminatory (pay-as-bid) auctions, we find that, relative to retail investors, institutional investors tend to bid higher in auctions when IPO shares are more valuable, and that underpricing is larger in auctions with relatively higher institutional bids. These results imply that institutional investors are better informed about IPO value, and that they obtain higher information rents when they bid higher relative to retail investors. We estimate the value of institutional investors’ private information to be worth about 8.68% of return, which is the extra rate of return they command on their informational advantages over retail investors.     

An Exploratory Analysis of Factors Influencing Initial Market Response and Media Reports following Shock Corporate Events

This article examines market efficiency in a natural environment using minute‐by‐minute share prices following fatal industrial disasters and sudden CEO deaths, and their subsequent media reports. Prices of affected firms start to react within an hour of shock events and fall by 3%; half this fall is reversed prior to the first media reports with the balance reversed by the next trading day. Spreads behave in similar fashion. This is interpreted as market overreaction as risk‐averse investors respond to uncertainty created by the shock; prices return to pre‐shock levels once it is clear that the event is to be expected and already built into valuations.     

Do Goodwill Impairments by European Firms Provide Useful Information to Investors?

In 2004 International Accounting Standards Board. (2004). International Accounting Standard (IAS) N°36: Impairment of assets. London: Author. [Google Scholar], the IASB adopted the mandatory annual impairment-test-only of goodwill (IAS 36) instead of amortization of goodwill. We present and discuss the academic literature regarding the association between the goodwill impairment, under this new standard, and the revision of investors’ expectations about a company’s future cash flows. The academic literature highlights that, in some specific cases, IAS 36 may help investors to revise their expectations. More precisely, goodwill impairment seems relevant when: (a) there is strong asymmetry of information between managers and investors, (b) managers disclose detailed information in the notes regarding their own assumptions about future cash flows, and (c) managers do not manage earnings and provide reliable information to investors. In many cases, goodwill impairment is probably useless for investors because they are able to revise their expectations based on public information, or because they cannot trust the accounting numbers and additional information in the notes about the impairment test, which are provided by (undisciplined) managers. More research is, however, needed to understand in which circumstances impairment-test-only is more useful, as well in which cases it is less adequate. Our analysis relates to the current post-implementation review and should be useful to standard-setters. Before any modification, we argue that standard-setters should carefully consider the economic and the institutional contexts when issuing a new accounting standard.     

Analyst Tipping: Additional Evidence

We examine whether analysts tip investors during investor conferences. We find that conference‐day abnormal returns of a presenting company are about 0.6% higher when the conference is hosted by an analyst who will initiate coverage with a Buy recommendation than when the conference is hosted by non‐initiating analysts. Furthermore, conference‐day abnormal returns of the presenting company amount to half of the price run‐up during the 20 trading days prior to the Buy initiation. Finally, there is a statistically and economically significant price run‐up prior to a Sell initiation (by about –0.7%) when the analyst who will initiate coverage with a Sell recommendation hosts a conference but does not invite the company to present. Our findings collectively suggest that analysts, rather than companies, tip select investors about upcoming initiations during conferences.