The Dark Side of Internal Capital Markets: Divisional Rent-Seeking and Inefficient Investment

We develop a two-tiered agency model that shows how rent-seeking behavior on the part of division managers can subvert the workings of an internal capital market. By rent-seeking, division managers can raise their bargaining power and extract greater overall compensation from the CEO. And because the CEO is herself an agent of outside investors, this extra compensation may take the form not of cash wages, but rather of preferential capital budgeting allocations. One interesting feature of our model is that it implies a kind of "socialism" in internal capital allocation, whereby weaker divisions get subsidized by stronger ones.     

Internal Capital Markets and Capital Structure: Bank Versus Internal Debt

We argue that domestic business groups are able to actively optimise the internal/external debt mix across their subsidiaries. Novel to the literature, we use bi‐level data (i.e. data from both individual subsidiary financial statements and consolidated group level financial statements) to model the bank and internal debt concentration of non‐financial Belgian private business group affiliates. As a benchmark, we construct a size and industry matched sample of non‐group affiliated (stand‐alone) companies. We find support for a pecking order of internal debt over bank debt at the subsidiary level which leads to a substantially lower bank debt concentration for group affiliates as compared to stand‐alone companies. The internal debt concentration of a subsidiary is mainly driven by the characteristics of the group's internal capital market. The larger its available resources, the more intra‐group debt is used while bank debt financing at the subsidiary level decreases. However, as the group's overall debt level mounts, groups increasingly locate bank borrowing in subsidiaries with low costs of external financing (i.e. large subsidiaries with important collateral assets) to limit moral hazard and dissipative costs. Overall, our results are consistent with the existence of a complex group wide optimisation process of financing costs.     

Managerial Incentives and Internal Capital Markets

Capital budgeting in multidivisional firms depends on the external assessment of the whole firm, as well as on headquarters' assessment of the divisions. While corporate headquarters may create value by directly monitoring divisions, the external assessment of the firm is a public good for division managers who, consequently, are tempted to free ride. As the number of divisions increases, the free‐rider problem is aggravated, and internal capital markets substitute for external capital markets in the provision of managerial incentives. The analysis relates the value of diversification to characteristics of the firm, the industry, and the capital market.     

The Bright Side of Internal Capital Markets

We examine capital expenditure decisions of discount firms in response to Wal-Mart's entry into their markets. Before Wal-Mart's entry, focused incumbents and discount divisions of diversified incumbents are similar in size, geographic dispersion, and firm debt levels. However, discount divisions of diversified firms are significantly more productive. After Wal-Mart's entry, diversified firms are quicker to either "exit" the discount business or "stay and fight." Also, their capital expenditures are more sensitive to the productivity of their discount business. Internal capital markets function well, as transfers are away from the worsening discount divisions. It appears diversified firms make better investment decisions.     

A Multinational Perspective on Capital Structure Choice and Internal Capital Markets

This paper analyzes the capital structures of foreign affiliates and internal capital markets of multinational corporations. Ten percent higher local tax rates are associated with 2.8% higher debt/asset ratios, with internal borrowing being particularly sensitive to taxes. Multinational affiliates are financed with less external debt in countries with underdeveloped capital markets or weak creditor rights, reflecting significantly higher local borrowing costs. Instrumental variable analysis indicates that greater borrowing from parent companies substitutes for three‐quarters of reduced external borrowing induced by capital market conditions. Multinational firms appear to employ internal capital markets opportunistically to overcome imperfections in external capital markets.     

A q Theory of Internal Capital Markets

We propose a tractable model of dynamic investment, spinoffs, financing, and risk management for a multidivision firm facing costly external finance. Our analysis formalizes the following insights: (i) Within-firm resource allocation is based not only on divisions' productivity, as in winner-picking models, but also their risk; (ii) firms may voluntarily spin off productive divisions to increase liquidity; (iii) diversification can reduce firm value in low-liquidity states, as it increases the spinoff cost and hampers liquidity management; (iv) corporate socialism makes liquidity less valuable; and (v) division investment is determined by the ratio between marginal $$ and marginal value of cash.     

Internal Capital Markets and the Competition for Corporate Resources

This article examines the role of corporate headquarters in allocating scarce resources to competing projects in an internal capital market. Unlike a bank, headquarters has control rights that enable it to engage in “winner-picking”—the practice of actively shifting funds from one project to another. By doing a good job in the winner-picking dimension, headquarters can create value even when it cannot help at all to relax overall firm-wide credit constraints. The model implies that internal capital markets may sometimes function more efficiently when headquarters oversees a small and focused set of projects.     

Learning about Internal Capital Markets from Corporate Spin-offs

We examine the investment behavior of firms before and after being spun off from their parent companies. Their investment after the spin-off is significantly more sensitive to measures of investment opportunities (e.g., industry Tobin's Q or industry investment) than it is before the spin-off. Spin-offs tend to cut investment in low Q industries and increase investment in high Q industries. These changes are observed primarily in spin-offs of firms in industries unrelated to the parents' industries and in spin-offs where the stock market reacts favorably to the spin-off announcement. Our findings suggest that spin-offs may improve the allocation of capital.     

Cash Flow and Investment: Evidence from Internal Capital Markets

Using data from the 1986 oil price decrease, I examine the capital expenditures of nonoil subsidiaries of oil companies. I test the joint hypothesis that 1) a decrease in cash/collateral decreases investment, holding fixed the profitability of investment, and 2) the finance costs of different parts of the same corporation are interdependent. The results support this joint hypothesis: oil companies significantly reduced their nonoil investment compared to the median industry investment. The 1986 decline in investment was concentrated in nonoil units that were subsidized by the rest of the company in 1985.     

内部资本市场:治理结构、机制与有效性

本文根据控制权的配置方式、终极股东的性质和实际控制人类型的不同,将内部资本市场的治理结构模式分为业务纽带型ICM、股权纽带型ICM和混合纽带型ICM三个大类和六个子类,并对结构演进的内在机制特征进行了探析,最后在治理结构模式的基础上分析了内部资本市场有效性。     

内部资本市场：组织载体、交易与租金

本文首先对内部资本市场存在于多元化企业集团的观点提出了质疑,认为多元化可以扩大内部资本市场的运作空间,但不是判断企业集团是否存在内部资本市场的必要条件；其次对内部资本市场交易按其特征进行分类,并对其与关联交易的区别进行了辨析；最后从组织租金视角研究内部资本市场的本质,界定了内部资本市场租金的内涵,提出内部资本市场的本质是租金的创造与分配。     

Opening the Black Box: Internal Capital Markets and Managerial Power

We analyze the internal capital markets of a multinational conglomerate, using a unique panel data set of planned and actual allocations to business units and a survey of unit CEOs. Following cash windfalls, more powerful managers obtain larger allocations and increase investment substantially more than their less connected peers. We identify cash windfalls as a source of misallocation of capital, as more powerful managers overinvest and their units exhibit lower ex post performance and productivity. These findings contribute to our understanding of frictions in resource allocation within firms and point to an important channel through which power may lead to inefficiencies.     

多元化公司内部资本市场配置效率——国外相关研究述评与启示

内部资本市场理论是理解多元化公司内部资金配置最重要的理论之一,本文介绍了多元化公司内部资本市场理论的研究进展,分别围绕内部资本市场的配置效率、测度方法以及内部资本市场与多元化公司价值的实证检验等几个方面,对国外已有的文献进行回顾与梳理,并阐述了内部资本市场理论对我国经济改革与发展具有的重要现实意义。     

Capital Constraints,Asymmetric Information,and Internal Capital Markets in Banking: New Evidence

A growing literature investigates the role of internal capital markets in mitigating financial constraints faced by the subsidiaries of a conglomerate. Most studies have relied on indirect tests based on correlations between the cash flows and the investment of the subsidiaries. In contrast, we avoid the widespread criticisms of such specifications by providing direct tests that focus on the mechanisms through which internal reallocations of funds occur. We find that internal capital markets are used by multibank holding companies to mitigate capital constraints faced by individual bank subsidiaries. In addition, we show that internal capital management within a multibank holding company involves not only the movement of capital to those subsidiaries with a relatively greater need for capital but also the movement of assets (loans) from less well capitalized to better capitalized subsidiaries by means of loan sales and purchases among the subsidiaries. Furthermore, net loan sales are used to allow efficiency‐enhancing specialization among bank subsidiaries, insofar as those subsidiaries with the best loan origination opportunities are able to focus on loan originations even if they do not have sufficient capital to hold the loans. Our evidence is consistent with banks affiliated with holding companies more actively participating in loan sales and purchases because, by using their internal secondary loan market, they are able to avoid the “lemons” problem faced by stand‐alone banks.     

Market Structure,Internal Capital Markets,and the Boundaries of the Firm

We study how the creation of an internal capital market (ICM) can invite strategic responses in product markets that, in turn, shape firm boundaries. ICMs provide ex post resource flexibility, but come with ex ante commitment costs. Alternatively, stand‐alones possess commitment ability but lack flexibility. By creating flexibility, integration can sometimes deter a rival's entry, but commitment problems can also invite predatory capital raising. These forces drive different organizational equilibria depending on the integrator's relation to the product market. Hybrid organizational forms like strategic alliances can sometimes dominate integration by offering some of its benefits with fewer strategic costs.     

多元化企业有效内部资本市场的均衡配置效应研究

由于投资者保护不完善产生的金融市场的不完美性,从事"挑选胜者"的多元化企业发现,即使经济中有额外资本需求的高生产率项目,通过内部资本市场将稀缺资本配置给平庸项目也是最优的.即使多元化企业的内部资本市场有效,这种内部资本配置偏见也会降低配置效率,因为多元化企业的存在可能使其他公司的融资更为困难.在金融发展处于中等程度的国家,与其多元化企业相联系的负外部性成本特别高,高度多元化会产生家族企业集团控制公司部门的情形,这可能降低市场效率.     

资本市场与资产评估

一、资产评估对我国资本市场持续健康发展的作用 资产评估作为一种专业化中介服务行业,服务于诸多重要经济领域和经济活动．在规范交易行为、降低交易成本、维护经济秩序、保障金融安全、促进经济发展等方面发挥着十分重要的作用。     

Corporate Failure Prediction Modeling: Distorted by Business Groups' Internal Capital Markets?

Abstract:  Most models in the bankruptcy prediction literature implicitly assume companies are stand-alone entities. However, in view of the importance of business groups in Continental Europe, ignoring group ties may have a negative impact on predictive reliability. We find that models encompassing both bankruptcy variables defined at subsidiary level and at group level have a substantially better fit and classification performance. Furthermore we find that the group's support causes improved survival chances for subsidiaries, especially when these subsidiaries belong to the group's core business. Overall our results are consistent with existing theoretical and empirical findings from the internal capital markets literature.