The colors of investors’ money: The role of institutional investors around the world

We study the role of institutional investors around the world using a comprehensive data set of equity holdings from 27 countries. We find that all institutional investors have a strong preference for the stock of large firms and firms with good governance, while foreign institutions tend to overweight firms that are cross-listed in the U.S. and members of the Morgan Stanley Capital International World Index. Firms with higher ownership by foreign and independent institutions have higher firm valuations, better operating performance, and lower capital expenditures. Our results indicate that foreign and independent institutions, with potentially fewer business ties to firms, are involved in monitoring corporations worldwide.     

Institutional tax clienteles and payout policy

This paper employs heterogeneity in institutional shareholder tax characteristics to identify the relation between firm payout policy and tax incentives. Analysis of a panel of firms matched with the tax characteristics of the clients of their institutional shareholders indicates that “dividend-averse” institutions are significantly less likely to hold shares in firms with larger dividend payouts. This relation between the tax preferences of institutional shareholders and firm payout policy may reflect dividend-averse institutions gravitating towards low dividend paying firms or managers adapting their payout policies to the interests of their institutional shareholders. Evidence is provided that both effects are operative. Plausibly exogenous changes in payout policy result in shifting institutional ownership patterns. Similarly, exogenous changes in the tax cost of institutional investors receiving dividends results in changes in firm dividend policy.     

The impact of governance reform on performance and transparency

This study examines the influence of Mexico’s efforts to improve corporate governance on firm performance and transparency. We utilize compliance data from the Code of ‘Best’ Corporate Practices, disclosed annually by public firms in Mexico, as a measure of corporate governance strength. We document a significant increase in compliance over 2000–2004 indicating Mexican companies view non-compliance as costly. However, we find no association between the governance index and firm performance, nor is there a relation with transparency. Instead, we find firms with greater compliance resort to the more costly mechanism of making dividend payments (higher propensity to pay and greater yield) to reduce agency conflicts. We conclude these associations are the direct result of the institutional features of the Mexican business environment, which is characterized by concentrated ownership of insiders, interlocked boards of directors, a lack of insider trading enforcement, and generally poor protection of minority investors. Our results show that monitoring mechanisms alone are not enough to fundamentally change economic behavior.     

Earnings,institutional investors,tax avoidance,and firm value: Evidence from Taiwan

This study examines the valuation of earnings from China and Taiwan by foreign and domestic institutional investors across a sample of Taiwanese electronics firms. We further compare the valuation of firm earnings reported in tax havens and non-tax havens, and whether these firms have changed tax avoidance activities since 2004 when the Taiwanese government enacted stricter auditing of transfer pricing regulation.Our findings show that both operating income from the home country and investment income are positively associated with firm value. Operating income from China, however, is not significantly related to firm value when institutional ownership of the firm exceeds fifty percent. This result indicates that operating income is valued differently, depending on the location from which the income was generated. Non-operating income enhances firm value regardless of the revenue source. We also report that foreign institutional investors favor operating income from domestic and investment sources over earnings generated from non-domestic sources and other non-operating income. Furthermore, our results suggest that firms rearrange reported profits from subsidiaries located in tax havens to affiliates in other countries following the transfer pricing audit guide Taiwan implemented in 2004. Results also indicate firms may have been shifting profits to other low-tax-rate countries, or to countries which do not require firms to pay taxes, even if they are not doing business in that country.     

When dedicated investors are distracted: The effect of institutional monitoring on corporate tax avoidance

This study investigates whether loosened monitoring from institutional investors affects firm tax planning decisions. We take advantage of shocks to unrelated parts of institutional investors’ portfolios and examine how plausibly exogenous changes in monitoring from institutional investors influence the level of firm tax avoidance. We find that investee firms significantly increase their temporary tax avoidance when there are temporary reductions in the attention of their dedicated institutional investors. Cross-sectional tests show that the tax impact of reduced dedicated investor attention and monitoring intensity is more pronounced when a firm’s information environment is less transparent and when a firm is subject to weaker internal governance. Our findings are robust to alternative research designs.     

Institutional investment horizon and investment–cash flow sensitivity

This paper examines the relevance of institutional investors’ investment horizon, as reflected in the response of firm investment to internal cash flows. We argue that institutional investors with longer investment horizons have greater incentives and efficiencies to engage in effective monitoring. This improved monitoring mitigates asymmetric information and agency problems, and in turn reduces the wedge between the costs of internal and external funds. As a result, the sensitivity of firms’ investment outlays to internal cash flows decreases in the presence of institutional investors with long-term investment horizons. Using a sample of 8402 US firms over the period 1981–2008, we provide empirical evidence consistent with these arguments.     

Crushed by a rational stampede: Strategic share dumping and shareholder insurrections

In this paper, we develop a dynamic model of institutional share dumping surrounding control events. Institutional investors sometimes dump shares, despite trading losses, in order to manipulate share prices and trigger activism by “relationship” investors. These institutional investors are motivated to trade not only by trading profits but also by a desire to protect the value of their inventory and to disguise the quality of their own information. Relationship investor profit from targeting firms both by improving firm performance and by generating private information.     

Equity issues and temporal variation in information asymmetry

We investigate the intertemporal relation between information asymmetry and equity issues, and particularly focus on which firms drive this relation. We find that when information asymmetry for a particular firm is low compared to the recent past, the firm is more likely to issue equity as opposed to debt. Importantly, this intertemporal association is driven by firms with high levels of information asymmetry. These firms are more prone to adverse selection costs and thus have more to gain by issuing equity after a narrowing of the information gap between managers and investors. Our findings are robust to various firm-specific proxies for information asymmetry.     

Determinants of start-up firm external financing worldwide

The typical new start-up firm acquires external financing in stages through its development. Researchers have frequently examined the later stages of financing; however, they have rarely analyzed the early stages of financing. This study examines the determinants of the initial start-up financing of entrepreneurial firms in 27 countries. There are information asymmetries and moral hazard problems inherent in the funding of an initial start-up firm. Empirical results show that institutional investors rely on the experience of entrepreneurs in managing start-ups and the quality of investor protection to reduce moral hazard. On the other hand, informal investors are also common in initial start-up funding. They tend to be attracted to the type of products in the new firm. In comparison, informal investors are likely to have a social relationship with the entrepreneur, and thus have information about that person’s skill and character, which renders entrepreneurial experience less important.     

Institutional ownership,analyst following,and share prices

We study the mutual relationships between institutional ownership, analyst following and share prices. We show that the pressure on firms to set lower share prices to attract analysts is attenuated by institutional monitoring. Our theory refutes the assumed causal relation between share price and institutional ownership, attributed to the share price–liquidity relation, and we show empirically that share prices and institutional ownership are positively related after controlling for liquidity. Our study provides a rationale for why better firms generally maintain higher share price levels, and offers new insights into the puzzling empirical linkages observed between nominal share price levels and firm fundamentals.     

Voting with their feet or activism? Institutional investors’ impact on CEO turnover

We examine the relation between institutional investors and management discipline over the last several decades to better understand how CEO turnover has increased. Using a sample of forced and voluntary turnovers, we investigate the changing roles of activism and exit among institutional investors between 1982-1994 and 1995-2006. We find evidence of activist investors throughout the sample period and their impact is consistently significant in multivariate analysis. In contrast, voting with their feet has declined to the point where it no longer affects turnover outcomes. Nonetheless, activism is fairly uncommon and does not explain the higher turnover observed over time. Block holdings of known activists have increased and are linked to improving target firms. However, other blocks merely reflect the increasing size of institutional money managers. Going forward, the increasing size of institutional investors seems likely to inhibit voting with their feet while activism remains an important vehicle for change.     

Institutional ownership and commonality in liquidity

We investigate the relation between institutional ownership and commonality in liquidity and whether this relation differs across country-level institutional and information environments. Using a comprehensive dataset for firms across 40 countries for the period between 2000 and 2016, we find that institutional ownership is negatively associated with stock liquidity commonality. In addition, a firm’s information environment plays the moderating role in the relation between institutional ownership and commonality in stock liquidity. Importantly, we document that the negative association between institutional ownership and liquidity commonality is stronger for firms in countries with weak institutional characteristics or less transparent information environments. Our findings provide additional insights into the role of institutional investors as a demand-side factor of liquidity commonality in international financial markets.     

Do organizational life-cycle and venture capital investors affect the management control systems used by the firm?

This paper investigates how the organizational life-cycle stage of the firm and the existence of venture capital investors affect the use of management control systems. The study consists of three types of management control systems, i.e. business planning, budgeting and management control techniques. Our empirical analyses are based on a survey questionnaire of 105 Finnish firms operating in all industries at different life-cycle stages. The results indicate that the business planning and use of management control techniques differ between the organizational life-cycle stage of the firm and the existence of venture capital investors. However, the existence of venture capital investors is also essential in maturity and revival firms while the earlier literature emphasizes their role in start-up and growth firms. Our results remain the same after conducting various robustness checks.     

Does the truth rest with the minority? Divergent views on nonfinancial firms' financial investments from the private equity market

We investigate how the seasoned equity market evaluates nonfinancial firms that recently bought wealth management products (WMPs). Using a sample of Chinese firms, we find that the stock market reacts less positively to private equity placements (PEPs) by firms that recently purchased WMPs (i.e., quasi-deposits) than to those that did not. Further analysis suggests that compared with retail investors, sophisticated (i.e., institutional and high-net-worth) investors pay a higher price for the shares of these WMP-buying firms. After PEPs, we find that the long-term operating performance and firm value of WMP-buying firms are higher than those of non-buying firms. Overall, the findings suggest that: (i) engaging in shadow banking activities (buying WMPs) does not mean a firm is distracted, and (ii) sophisticated investors are less concerned than retail investors about a firm's shadow banking activities.     

Controlling shareholders and market timing in share issuance

We examine market timing in the equity issuance of firms controlled by large shareholders using a hand-collected data set of controlling shareholders' ownership stakes in Chile between 1990 and 2009. When a firm issues shares, the controlling shareholder can either maintain or change his ownership stake depending on how many of the new shares he subscribes. Issuance predicts poor future returns and is preceded by high returns, but only when the controlling shareholder's stake is significantly reduced. Consistent with market timing, the results are stronger in the absence of institutional investors and in hot issuance markets.     

Institutional investor type,earnings management and benchmark beaters

This paper classifies institutional investors into transient or long-term by their investment horizons to examine the association between institutional investor type and firms’ discretionary earnings management strategies in two mutually exclusive settings – firms that (do not) use accruals to meet/beat earnings targets. The results support the view that long-term institutional investors constrain accruals management among firms that manage earnings to meet/beat earnings benchmarks. This suggests long-term institutional investors can mitigate aggressive earnings management among these firms. Transient institutional ownership is not systematically associated with aggressive earnings management and is evident only among firms that manage earnings to meet/beat their earnings benchmarks. This indicates transient institution-associated managerial myopia may not be as prevalent as posited by critics. This study highlights the importance of explicitly considering the type of institutional investor and the specific setting when investigating the association between institutional ownership and corporate earnings management.     

The effects of institutional ownership on the value and risk of diversified firms

We study the link between institutional ownership and firms' diversification strategy, value and risk. Our sample includes US-listed firms with segment data from 1998 to 2012. We find that not all kinds of diversification are value-destroying; unlike industrially-diversified firms, global single-segment firms are trading at a premium relative to their imputed value. The presence of institutional investors and the stability of their shareholdings positively influence the likelihood that a firm is diversified. The proportion (volatility) of institutional ownership is higher (lower) among diversified firms compared to domestic single-segment firms. More importantly, the higher the proportions of institutional shareholdings, the higher the excess value of the diversified firm and the lower the firm idiosyncratic risk. Institutional ownership volatility, on the other hand, is inversely related to a firm excess value but positively related to its idiosyncratic risk. Thus, the presence of long-term stable institutional investors enhances the value of diversified firms. Our findings remain robust to various model specifications and estimation techniques.     

Institutional investment horizons,corporate governance,and credit ratings: International evidence

Using a comprehensive set of firms from 57 countries over the 2000–2016 period, we examine the relation between institutional investor horizons and firm-level credit ratings. Controlling for firm- and country-specific factors, as well as for firm fixed effects, we find that larger long-term (short-term) institutional ownership is associated with higher (lower) credit ratings. This finding is robust to sample composition, alternative estimation methods, and endogeneity concerns. Long-term institutional ownership affects ratings more during times of higher expropriation risk, for firms with weaker internal corporate governance, and for those in countries with lower-quality institutional environments. Additional analysis shows that long-term investors facilitate access to debt markets for firms facing severe agency problems. These findings suggest that, unlike their short-term counterparts, long-term investors improve a firm's credit risk profile through effective monitoring.     

Friends or foes? Target selection decisions of sovereign wealth funds and their consequences

This paper examines investment strategies of sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), their effect on target firm valuation, and how both of these are related to SWF transparency. We find that SWFs prefer large and poorly performing firms facing financial difficulties. Their investments have a positive effect on target firms' stock prices around the announcement date but no substantial effect on firm performance and governance in the long run. We also find that transparent SWFs are more likely to invest in financially constrained firms and have a greater impact on target firm value than opaque SWFs. Overall, SWFs are similar to passive institutional investors in their preference for target characteristics and in their effect on target performance, and SWF transparency influences SWFs' investment activities and their impact on target firm value.     

Foreign Institutional Ownership and the Global Convergence of Financial Reporting Practices

This paper investigates whether foreign institutional investors affect the global convergence of financial reporting practices. Using several measures of reporting convergence, we show that U.S. institutional ownership is positively associated with subsequent changes in emerging market firms’ accounting comparability to their U.S. industry peers. We identify this association using an instrumental variable approach that exploits exogenous variation in U.S. institutional investment generated by the JGTRRA Act of 2003. Further, we provide evidence of a specific mechanism—the switch to a Big Four audit firm—through which U.S. institutional investors affect reporting convergence. Finally, we show that, for emerging market firms, an increase in comparability to U.S. firms is associated with an improvement in the properties of foreign analysts’ forecasts.