Corporate Diversification and the Cost of Debt

The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics - This paper investigates whether corporate diversification by property type and by geography reduces the costs of debt capital. It employs...     

环境不确定性、多元化经营与资本成本

以2007-2013年的上市公司为研究对象,考察新兴市场中的微观环境因素如何影响企业的经营战略以及两者的交互作用对资本成本的影响。研究表明,环境不确定性与企业资本成本显著正相关,进一步发现,随着环境不确定性的增加,企业多元化经营程度呈现先升后降的趋势,而资本成本则随着多元化经营程度增加呈现先降后升的趋势。研究结果说明,在转型经济环境下,微观环境的不确定性加剧了企业与投资者和债权人之间的信息不对称程度,增加企业的资本成本,而企业实施多元化经营降低环境不确定性对企业资本成本不利影响的作用是有限度的。     

公司的资本成本与投资理性——来自沪深上市公司的证据

本文对我国上市公司的投资行为及其影响因素进行了实证研究。结果表明：（1）上市企业的投资决策受资本成本的约束显著，符合市场理性；（2）企业投资对内部现金流、外部负债融资和股权融资都具有敏感性，但回归系数依序递减，可能说明了不同融资形式的成本差异；（3）产品市场需求增长为企业带来了有价值的投资机会，具有拉动企业投资的显著作用。     

The Corporate Cost of Capital and the Return on Corporate Investment

We estimate the internal rates of return earned by nonfinancial firms on (i) the initial market values of their securities and (ii) the cost of their investments. The return on value is an estimate of the overall corporate cost of capital. The estimate of the real cost of capital for 1950–96 is 5.95 percent. The real return on cost is larger, 7.38 percent, so on average corporate investment seems to be profitable. A by-product of calculating these returns is information about the history of corporate earnings, investment, and financing decisions that is perhaps more interesting than the returns.     

企业社会责任信息披露与权益资本成本

运用理论分析和实证检验的方法从权益资本成本的角度研究我国上市公司企业社会责任信息披露的经济动机.研究发现:上市公司上期权益资本成本越高,本期披露社会责任报告的可能性越大,说明降低权益资本成本是上市公司决定是否披露社会责任报告的重要经济动机;对于首次披露企业社会责任报告的公司,上期权益资本成本越高,本期社会责任信息披露质量越高;但对非首次披露企业社会责任报告的公司来说,披露企业社会责任报告的资本成本动机不显著.     

Trading-off Corporate Control and Personal Diversification through Capital Structure and Merger Activity

Abstract:  In this study we use direct estimates of the portfolio diversification of the largest shareholder in a firm to study the impact of shareholder diversification on the firm. For firms where the controlling shareholder is an individual, our tests indicate that the owner-managers use debt, dual class shares and corporate control transactions (merger activity) to strategically trade off corporate control and the drawback of poor portfolio diversification. However, for firms where the controlling shareholder is an institution, our results indicate that control but not diversification is important.     

Corporate Governance and the Cost of Capital: Evidence from Australian Companies

The authors examine a sample of large Australian companies over a 10‐year period with the aim of analyzing the role that firm‐level corporate governance mechanisms such as insider ownership and independent boards play in explaining a company's cost of capital. The Australian corporate system offers a unique environment for assessing the impact of corporate governance mechanisms. Australian companies have board structures and mechanisms that are similar in design to Anglo‐Saxon boards while offering a striking contrast to those of German and Japanese boards. At the same time, however, the Australian market for corporate control is much less active as a corrective mechanism against management entrenchment than its U.S. and U.K. counterparts, making the role of internal governance mechanisms potentially more important in Australia than elsewhere. The authors report that greater insider ownership, the presence of institutional blockholders, and independent boards are all associated with reductions in the perceived risk of a firm, thereby leading investors to demand lower rates of return on capital. In so doing, the study provides evidence of the important role of corporate governance in increasing corporate values.     

Cash Holdings and Corporate Diversification

This paper studies the relation between corporate liquidity and diversification. The key finding is that multidivision firms hold significantly less cash than stand‐alone firms because they are diversified in their investment opportunities. Lower cross‐divisional correlations in investment opportunity and higher correlations between investment opportunity and cash flow correspond to lower cash holdings, even after controlling for cash flow volatility. The effects are strongest in financially constrained firms and in well‐governed firms, and correspond to efficient fund transfers from low‐ to high‐productivity divisions. Taken together, these results bring forth an efficient link between diversification and corporate liquidity.     

Strategic Cost of Diversification

This article proposes a new explanation for the large cross-sectionalvariation in the excess values of diversified firms. The modelapplies the idea of shareholders' limited liability affectingfirms' output market strategies to the analysis of financialand operating choices of conglomerates. The inability of conglomeratesto commit to unconstrained optimal operating strategies, followingfrom the lack of flexibility in choosing their divisions' capitalstructures, reduces their value. Thus, the model highlightsa new type of inefficiency of the conglomerate organizationalstructure, which is suboptimal financing. The predictions ofthe model are generally supported by the data.     

多元化与资本成本的关系——来自中国股票市场的证据

根据期权定价模型,多元化降低了公司风险,但其受益者是债权人,而不是股东,这使得公司部分财富从股东手中转移到债权人手中,由此降低了股东财富,因此,多元化可能并不为股东所欢迎,从而多元化公司的权益资本成本可能高于专业化公司。同时,由于内部资本市场在公司内部的资源再配置作用,使得公司降低了对融资成本较高的外部资本市场的依赖,因此,多元化经营公司的总资本成本可能低于专业化经营公司。本文以2001—2004年我国上市公司为例,对多元化与公司权益资本成本和总资本成本之间的关系进行了实证检验。研究结果表明,多元化与权益资本成本正相关,而与总资本成本负相关。     

The Empirical Average Cost of Capital: A New Approach to Estimating the Cost of Corporate Funds

The authors develop a new way to measure the cost of capital, called the empirical average cost of capital (or “EACC”), which is consistent with existing methods of calculating the weighted average cost of capital, but uses information from the firm's financial statements and requires fewer and less subjective inputs. The authors’ model relies on the concept of economic profit while using data from the period 1990‐2012 on net operating profits and total capital to estimate the EACC at both the individual company and industry‐wide levels. Estimates of the EACC and rolling quarterly forecasts of future net operating profits for a single company, McDonald's, for its related industry, and for 57 other U.S. industries are compared to five conventional “textbook” estimates of the weighted average cost of capital published by Ibbotson Associates. The authors find that the EACC yields forecasts of future net operating profit after taxes that compare favorably to those of the five published measures of the weighted average cost of capital, as well as the average and median of these measures.     

International Evidence on the Value of Corporate Diversification

The valuation effect of diversification is examined for large samples of firms in Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom for 1992 and 1994. We find no significant diversification discount in Germany, but a significant diversification discount of 10 percent in Japan and 15 percent in the U.K. Concentrated ownership in the hands of insiders enhances the valuation effect of diversification in Germany, but not in Japan or the U.K. For Japan, only firms with strong links to an industrial group have a diversification discount. These findings suggest that international differences in corporate governance affect the impact of diversification on shareholder wealth.     

Shareholder Benefits from Corporate International Diversification

This study provides further evidence on the rates of return realized by the shareholders of multinational firms relative to those of purely domestic firms. The results indicate that the risk-adjusted returns realized by the shareholders are identical across the two groups except where the MNC operates in competitive foreign markets. In that case, MNC shareholders experience negative abnormal returns. The study also provides further evidence on the risk-reduction effect of international diversification. The results fail to support the hypothesis that the beta is a convex function of the degree of international involvement. Finally, the paper provides some preliminary evidence on the effect of corporate international diversification on shareholders' returns. It is found that abnormal returns rise by some 18 percent during the 14 months preceding the initial foreign diversification.     

Does Corporate Diversification Destroy Value?

We analyze several hundred firms that expand via acquisition and/or increase their number of business segments. The combined market reaction to acquisition announcements is positive but acquiring firm excess values decline after the diversifying event. Much of the excess value reduction occurs because our sample firms acquire already discounted business units, and not because diversifying destroys value. This implies that the standard assumption that conglomerate divisions can be benchmarked to typical stand-alone firms should be carefully reconsidered. We also show that excess value does not decline when firms increase their number of business segments because of pure reporting changes.     

公司多元化战略对资本结构影响的研究——基于面板数据的实证分析

从战略管理和财务理论融合的角度,利用762家上市公司的面板数据对公司多元化战略与资本结构之间的关系进行实证分析,研究发现:公司的债务水平与多元化程度存在显著的正相关关系,并且单一业务型公司的负债水平最低,主导业务型和相关业务型公司的居中,非相关业务型公司的债务水平最高.因此,公司战略的制定与实施应考虑其财务影响;同样,资本结构决策也应该考虑如何与公司战略相配合,以从资本结构决策中获得竞争优势.     

Quality of Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure and Cost of Equity Capital: Lessons from China

This article explores the relationship between the quality of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure and the cost of equity capital by analyzing the financial data and CSR reports of A-share listed firms in China from 2008 to 2014. The quality of the CSR disclosure is shown to be negatively related to the cost of equity capital of the listed firms. This negative correlation proves to be more prominent among firms of environmentally sensitive industries. Taking the ownership of the listed firms into consideration, it is further confirmed that the negative relationship between the CSR disclosure and the cost of equity capital is of higher significance for state-owned enterprises. Our findings also empirically demonstrate that the quality of CSR disclosure is more negatively related to the cost of equity capital among the large listed firms than the smaller ones.     

Disagreement and the Cost of Capital

We assess how forms of disagreement among investors affect a firm's cost of capital. Firms experience a lower cost of capital if investors perceive that other investors are ignoring relevant disclosures (perceived errors of omission), but a higher cost of capital if investors perceive that others are responding to irrelevant disclosures (perceived errors of commission). The impact of these two sources of disagreement on the cost of capital is determined by the distribution of opinion and the nature of disclosure. For example, even though aggregated disclosures reveal less to investors, aggregated disclosures may decrease the cost of capital by eliminating disagreement associated with perceived errors of commission. These and additional results arise because the cost of capital is driven not only by investors’ uncertainty about the firm's future earnings performance, but also by investors’ uncertainty about the evolution of beliefs, which partly determines the path of prices.     

Information and the Cost of Capital

We investigate the role of information in affecting a firm's cost of capital. We show that differences in the composition of information between public and private information affect the cost of capital, with investors demanding a higher return to hold stocks with greater private information. This higher return arises because informed investors are better able to shift their portfolio to incorporate new information, and uninformed investors are thus disadvantaged. In equilibrium, the quantity and quality of information affect asset prices. We show firms can influence their cost of capital by choosing features like accounting treatments, analyst coverage, and market microstructure.     

Corporate Acquisitions,Diversification, and the Firm's Life Cycle

Agency theories predict that older firms make value‐destroying acquisitions to benefit managers. Neoclassical theories predict instead that such firms make wealth‐increasing acquisitions to exploit underutilized assets. Using IPO cohorts, we establish that, while younger firms make more related and diversifying acquisitions than mature firms, the acquisition rate follows a U‐shape over firms’ life cycle. Consistent with neoclassical theories, we show that acquiring firms have better performance and growth opportunities and create wealth through acquisitions of nonpublic firms throughout their life. Consistent with agency theories, older firms experience negative stock price reactions for acquisitions of public firms.