大股东股权质押与上市公司资本运作

资本运作一方面可以提高股价,另一方面可以让公司股票停牌,那么是否会成为大股东度过质押风险的方式呢？基于此,本文以2007—2018年我国A股上市公司为研究对象,考察了大股东股权质押对上市公司资本运作的影响及其作用机制。研究发现:(1)大股东股权质押比例越高,上市公司进行资本运作的可能性越大; 这一关系在质押股权面临的平仓风险越高和非国有控股的上市公司中更为显著。(2)机制检验发现,随着质押比例的提高,上市公司进行资本运作后的停牌时间越长;从股价提升的效果来看,资本运作在短期内能提高股价,缓解质押风险,但从长期来看效果并不显著。(3)上市公司进行资本运作的方式主要为股权转让、资产收购和资产剥离;其中,大股东主要利用资产收购和资产剥离增加停牌时间,利用股权转让助推股价。在控制了潜在的内生性问题影响以及各种稳健性检验下,上述结论仍然成立。

Large Shareholders' Share Pledging and Capital Operations of Listed Companies

In recent years, it has become common in China's capital market for large shareholders to use stock pledging for financing purposes.However, due to market turbulence, large shareholders are facing a pledge crisis, which has become a hot topic in the capital market and has raised concerns about systemic risk.Stock pledging seems to be a financing behavior of shareholders that is unrelated to their companies.However, because shareholders occupy a special position, once the risk of the pledged stocks is high, it will have a significant impact on the company's control, stock price, operating performance, and information disclosure, among other effects.Therefore, in the face of risk, large shareholders are strongly motivated to take measures to stabilize the company's stock price.Some scholars have studied the measures adopted by large shareholders, such as information disclosure manipulation or tax evasion.However, these studies have ignored one important aspect: capital operations.In fact, listed companies have often stabilized their share prices through capital operations.Capital operation refers to the process of adding value to a company through the use of capital market instruments and financial instruments by skillfully operating capital.Capital operations mainly include asset acquisition, equity transfers, asset divestiture, absorption and mergers, debt restructuring, asset replacement, and tender offers.Capital operations are often used by companies, and may be a way for large shareholders to alleviate equity pledge risk.First, in reality, many listed companies suspend trading for long periods due to capital operation uncertainty in attempts to avoid a further decline in their stock price.Second, some studies have shown that capital operations are an effective method for listed companies to increase their excess return.Therefore, we try to answer the following question: when the proportion of large shareholders pledging stocks is high or when the stock price reaches the closing line, will listed companies use capital operations to survive potential risk？ If the answer is yes, how does this affect their capital operations？ Furthermore, what is the mechanism behind large shareholders' use of capital operations to avoid pledge risk？Based on these questions, we investigate the relationship between stock pledging by large shareholders and capital operations using Chinese A-share listed companies over the 2007-2018 period.The results show that (1) the higher the proportion of stocks pledged, the greater the possibility of capital operations in companies; this relationship is more significant in margin calls and in private listed companies.(2) The mechanism test shows that when the pledge ratio increases, the suspension time after capital operations increases; from the perspective of the effect of stock price promotion, capital operations can improve the stock price and alleviate pledge risk in the short term, but the effect is not significant in the long term.(3) The main types of capital operations in listed companies are equity transfers, asset acquisition, and asset divestiture.Further analysis shows that large shareholders mainly use asset acquisition and asset divestiture to increase the suspension time and use equity transfers to increase the stock price.We contribute to the literature in the following ways.(1) From the perspective of capital operations, we find new evidence that large shareholders influence the behavior of companies.In addition, one of the main contributions of this study is to identify the mechanism of capital operations to alleviate equity pledge risk, that is, large shareholders can alleviate the pledge crisis by influencing the market reaction and the suspension time of capital operations.(2) We expand relevant research on the suspension of listed companies.So far, the literature has mainly analyzed the economic consequences of suspension.Based on the motivation for the suspension of listed companies, we find that shareholders may use this suspension to realize their own interests.(3) Previous research has mainly focused on the measures taken by companies when faced with stock pledge risk, but there is little discussion of whether these measures can actually address this risk.We provide an answer to this question and find that improving stock prices through capital operations can resolve stock pledge risk in the short term, but the effect is not significant in the long term.