Equity Carve-Outs and Managerial Discretion

This study proposes a managerial discretion hypothesis of equity carve-outs in which managers value control over assets and are reluctant to carve out subsidiaries. Thus, managers undertake carve-outs only when the firm is capital constrained. Consistent with this hypothesis, firms that carve out subsidiaries exhibit poor operating performance and high leverage prior to carve-outs. Also consistent with this hypothesis, in carve-outs wherein funds raised are used to pay down debt, the average excess stock return of + 6.63 percent is significantly greater than the average excess stock return of −0.01 percent for carve-outs wherein funds are retained for investment purposes.     

Deciphering the Motives for Equity Carve-Outs

I analyze 181 equity carve‐outs to determine whether the transactions are motivated by potential efficiency improvements or by an opportunity to sell overvalued equity. Carve‐out operating performance peaks at issue, declining significantly thereafter. Parents sell a greater percentage of shares when subsequent performance is poor. A negative relation also exists between long‐term excess returns and the percentage of shares sold. If subsequent performance is correlated with the degree to which parent managers believe carve‐out subsidiaries are over‐ or undervalued, results imply that many carve‐outs are conducted, not to improve efficiency, but to sell potentially overvalued equity.     

The Pricing of Equity Carve-Outs

This article examines the pricing of stock for 251 equity carve‐outs during the 1986–1995 period. We document a mean initial‐day return of 5.83% and a mean one‐week return of 5.43%. Among carve‐outs, the initial underpricing is lower for issues represented by high prestige investment bankers and those that have a lower offer price. In comparison with 251 initial public offering (IPO) firms matched by size and book‐to‐market ratio of equity, carveouts exhibit significantly lower initial‐day returns, but their buy‐and‐hold returns for sixmonth and one‐year periods are not significantly different from IPOs. The IPO firms have a three‐year return of 28.82% which is significantly higher than the 21.07% return for the carve‐out firms.     

利好催生中国债市

2001年是我国债券市场空前活跃的一年,在这一年里,共发行国债4883.5亿元,金融债券2540亿元,企业债券164亿元.与此同时,国债二级市场也呈现出一派火爆场面,上半年日平均成交13.7亿元,下半年日平均成交21.7亿元.国债投资者不仅躲过了在股市被套的风险,而且收益不菲.在经历了2001年高速增长之后,2002年债市是否还有投资机会呢?     

On the Asymmetric Recognition of Good and Bad News in France, Germany and the United Kingdom

We investigate whether accounting systems recognise bad news more promptly in earnings than good news, where news is proxied by changes in share price. The analysis is based on a sample of firm/years drawn from France, Germany, and the UK during 1990 to 1998. These three countries are the originators of three distinct legal traditions. Previous studies have argued that asymmetric recognition, one manifestation of conservative accounting, is sensitive to legal background and history. We find that in all three countries the contemporaneous association between earnings and returns is much stronger for bad news (i.e. when price changes are negative) than for good news, and although the results are strongest for the UK, and then France, the inter-country differences are not statistically significant. The stronger reaction to bad news is more pronounced for firms with relatively low capitalisation. We also find that the relative persistence of profits and losses are consistent with asymmetric recognition in France and the UK, but not in Germany, and that the more timely recognition of bad news is maintained even when we control for earnings persistence. When we extend the model to include price changes from previous periods, we see that the stronger reaction to bad news decays over time. The results from this model also suggest that 'pervasive' conservatism, unrelated to news, is observed in Germany and France, but the UK results are consistent with optimism. Although asymmetric recognition is generally strongest in the UK and weakest in Germany, and this broadly conforms to our expectations, the differences are less clear than the results from earlier periods.     

"九点"道出股市福音

种种迹象标明,若将国务院的“九点意见”视为中国证券市场发展史上的纲领性文件,似乎也并不为过。     

Good News,Bad News,Volatility, and Betas

We investigate the conditional covariances of stock returns using bivariate exponential ARCH (EGARCH) models. These models allow market volatility, portfolio-specific volatility, and beta to respond asymmetrically to positive and negative market and portfolio returns, i.e., “leverage” effects. Using monthly data, we find strong evidence of conditional heteroskedasticity in both market and non-market components of returns, and weaker evidence of time-varying conditional betas. Surprisingly while leverage effects appear strong in the market component of volatility, they are absent in conditional betas and weak and/or inconsistent in nonmarket sources of risk.     

创业投资的春天到了--访中科招商创业投资管理有限公司总裁单祥双

中小企业板块的开设对于创业投资业是一件好事,它会引导社会资本对创业投资的重新关注。     

Is a Bond Rating Downgrade Bad News,Good News,or No News for Stockholders?

We examine the reaction of common stock returns to bond rating changes. While recent studies find a significant negative stock response to downgrades, we argue that this reaction should not be expected for all downgrades because: (1) some rating changes are anticipated by market participants and (2) downgrades because of an anticipated move to transfer wealth from bondholders to stockholders should be good news for stockholders. We find that downgrades associated with deteriorating financial prospects convey new negative information to the capital market, but that downgrades due to changes in firms' leverage do not.     

Delayed Reaction to Good News and the Cross-Autocorrelation of Portfolio Returns

We document a directional asymmetry in the small stock concurrent and lagged response to large stock movements. When returns on large stocks are negative, the concurrent beta for small stocks is high, but the lagged beta is insignificant. When returns on large stocks are positive, small stocks have small concurrent betas and very significant lagged betas. That is, the cross-autocorrelation puzzle documented by Lo and MacKinlay (1990a) is associated with a slow response by some small stocks to good, but not to bad, common news. Time series portfolio tests and cross-sectional tests of the delay for individual securities suggest that existing explanations of the cross-autocorrelation puzzle based on data mismeasurement, minor market imperfections, or time-varying risk premiums fail to capture the directional asymmetry in the data.     

美国债券市场上扬

投资债券划算 自去年以来,全球债券市场跑赢了股市,债券基金的高效运作和低风险特点吸引了众多投资者.据ICI机构统计,今年四月份,流入股票基金的资金从三月份的296亿美元减少至118亿美元,减幅为60.14%;而流入债券基金的资金却从67亿美元增至78亿美元,增幅为16.42%,这一减一增缩小了两者之间的差距.     

透视我国上市银行股权结构

2005年的股权分置改革将中国股市快速推向全流通的通道。截至2009年12月,我国证券市场股票总市值达到243939亿元,其中,股票流通市值151258.65亿元,占总市值的62%。那么,就我国上市银行而言,经过股权分置改革的洗礼后,其股权结构展现的是一种什么样的特点?目前的股权结构是否能有效促进其绩效的提高?     

On Pricing and Hedging the No‐Negative‐Equity Guarantee in Equity Release Mechanisms

In a roll‐up mortgage, the borrower receives a loan in the form of a lump sum. The loan is rolled up with interest until the borrower dies, sells the house, or moves into long‐term care permanently. The house is sold at that time, and the proceeds are used to repay the loan and interest. Most roll‐up mortgages are sold with a no‐negative‐equity guarantee (NNEG), which caps the redemption amount at the lesser of the face amount of the loan and the sale proceeds. The core of this study is to develop a framework for pricing and managing the risks of the NNEG.     

跨地上市公司具有较低的权益资本成本吗?——基于“法与金融”的视角

根据法与金融理论,严格的投资者保护制度有助于降低公司的权益资本成本,本文以赴中国香港跨地上市后返回中国大陆发行A股的公司为研究对象,检验其是否因受制于更为严格的投资者保护制度而具有较低的权益资本成本。研究结果表明,在A股市场上,赴港跨地上市公司比其他公司的权益资本成本更低,跨地上市对权益资本成本具有降低作用,且这种降低作用与香港较为严格的投资者保护制度有关。     

When Good News Is Not So Good: Economy‐wide Uncertainty and Stock Returns

This paper shows that variation in economy‐wide uncertainty causes asymmetric stock price responses to firm earnings surprises. The uncertainty that attends bad earnings news that arrives during expansions with greater economy‐wide uncertainty occasions larger price declines. This is because news inconsistent with investors’ prior beliefs about the state of the economy increases uncertainty, which amplifies the negative cash flow effects contained in bad earnings news. Asymmetrically, the positive cash flow effect of good earnings news that arrives during recessions is offset by increased investor uncertainty, which results in relatively smaller price reactions to the good news. This is consistent with Veronesi's rational expectations equilibrium model, which shows that investors demand higher expected returns in the face of greater uncertainty.     

The Stock Market's Reaction to Unemployment News: Why Bad News Is Usually Good for Stocks

We find that on average, an announcement of rising unemployment is good news for stocks during economic expansions and bad news during economic contractions. Unemployment news bundles three types of primitive information relevant for valuing stocks: information about future interest rates, the equity risk premium, and corporate earnings and dividends. The nature of the information bundle, and hence the relative importance of the three effects, changes over time depending on the state of the economy. For stocks as a group, information about interest rates dominates during expansions and information about future corporate dividends dominates during contractions.     

社会公平问题的经济法思考

针对中国当前突出的社会公平问题,传统部门法面临着挑战.经济法的公平价值体现在通过保障国家调节和规范国家经济调节权,克服因市场与(或)政府的失灵所带来的不公平.中国当前的社会公平问题是在市场经济条件下产生的,而中国经济法也是为解决市场经济条件下的市场缺陷和社会公平问题而产生的.因此,中国经济法应该担负起解决当前社会公平问题的主要任务,实现其社会公平价值.其价值可以通过制定、完善和实施相关经济法得以实现.     

Good News for Value Stocks: Further Evidence on Market Efficiency

This article examines the hypothesis that the superior return to so-called value stocks is the result of expectational errors made by investors. We study stock price reactions around earnings announcements for value and glamour stocks over a 5-year period after portfolio formation. The announcement returns suggest that a significant portion of the return difference between value and glamour stocks is attributable to earnings surprises that are systematically more positive for value stocks. The evidence is inconsistent with a risk-based explanation for the return differential.