Affiliated firms and financial support: Evidence from Indian business groups

We investigate the functioning of internal capital markets in Indian Business Groups. We document that intragroup loans are an important means of transferring cash across group firms and are typically used to support financially weaker firms. Evidence suggests that an important reason for providing support may be to avoid default by a group firm and consequent negative spillovers to the rest of the group. Consistent with such spillovers, the first bankruptcy in a group is followed by significant drops in external financing, investments and profits of other firms in the group and an increase in their bankruptcy probability.     

The internal capital markets of business groups: Evidence from intra-group loans

We study business groups? internal capital markets using a unique data set on intra-group lending in Chile (1990–2009). In line with groups? financing advantage, firms that borrow internally have higher investment, leverage, and return on equity (ROE) than other firms. At the margin, controlling shareholders have higher cash-flow rights in borrowing firms than in lending firms. However, there is no robust evidence of minority shareholders losing out from intra-group loans as tunneling predicts. Our evidence is consistent with the idea that strict regulation and disclosure requirements for intra-group loans, which are features of the Chilean market, reduce the risk of expropriation in pyramids.     

Disappearing internal capital markets: Evidence from diversified business groups in Korea

This paper examines how the onset of a financial crisis affects the operation of internal capital markets among firms within a diversified business group. We find that active internal capital markets within Korean business groups (chaebols) attenuate the financial constraints of the group-affiliated firms, allowing them to make efficient capital allocations during the early 1990s. However, these markets barely function after the financial crisis of 1997. Instead, we observe public debt markets serving as a substitute for internal capital markets. Our results suggest that chaebol firms’ coordinated attempts to achieve healthier financial structures in the wake of the crisis have taken place at the expense of investment efficiency.     

The evolution of capital structure and operating performance after leveraged buyouts: Evidence from U.S. corporate tax returns

This study uses corporate tax return data to examine the evolution of firms' financial structure and performance after leveraged buyouts (LBOs) for a comprehensive sample of 317 LBOs taking place between 1995 and 2007. We find little evidence of operating improvements subsequent to an LBO, although consistent with prior studies, we do observe operating improvements in the set of LBO firms that have public financial statements. We also find that firms do not reduce leverage after LBOs, even if they generate excess cash flow. Our results suggest that effecting a sustained change in capital structure is a conscious objective of the LBO structure.     

Underinvestment vs. overinvestment: Evidence from price reactions to pension contributions

Mandatory contributions to defined benefit pension plans provide a unique identification strategy to estimate the market's assessment of the value of internal resources controlling for investment opportunities. The price decrease following a pension-induced drop in cash is magnified for firms that appear a priori more financially constrained, suggesting a negative effect of financing frictions on investment. In contrast, low control on managerial discretion attenuates the negative price reaction to contributions consistent with empire-building theories. While overinvestment seems to be the prevalent distortion in a panel of large firms, underinvestment appears to dominate in a sample that is more representative of the cross-section of listed companies.     

Government ownership and corporate governance: Evidence from the EU

The ongoing global financial crisis has led to the largest increase in state intervention since the Great Depression. Direct government ownership in publicly-traded corporations has increased dramatically since 2008. How will this increase in public ownership affect the governance of these erstwhile private companies? We examine the impact of government ownership on corporate governance using a sample of firms from the European Union, a region that is relatively familiar with active government participation. Our main finding is that government ownership is associated with lower governance quality. We further show that while government intervention is negatively related to governance quality in civil law countries, it is positively related to governance quality in common law countries. Finally, we find that the preferential voting rights of golden shares are especially damaging to governance quality.     

Approval of shareholder-sponsored proposals: Evidence from Canada

Little is known about shareholder voting at firms incorporated outside of the United States. Proposals sponsored at such firms and the voting patterns and factors associated with these proposals should conceivably be similar to those in the U.S. if the legal and governance structures of the countries are similar. We examine 264 shareholder proposals sponsored at Canadian firms between 2001 and 2005 in order to determine if differences created by the Canadian governance system, being more voluntary than that of the U.S. system, lead to differences in shareholder voting. We find many similarities between voting at the Canadian firms and those found in the literature for their U.S. counterparts, including some types of frequently submitted proposals and factors impacting the level of shareholder approval. However, unlike the concurrent literature on U.S. firms, we find very few majority approved proposals and a much lower overall level of affirmative voting returns.     

Group affiliation, identity of managers, and the relation between managerial ownership and performance

Two features in Taiwan's companies complicate the ownership-performance relationship. First, the firm's management is usually controlled, either directly or indirectly via equity interlocks, by the controlling family. The shareholding of managers is an access through which the controlling owners can secure control and entrench their private benefits. Second, the management generally consists of individual managers and representatives appointed to top managerial positions by institutions that hold a substantial percentage of shares. The role of corporate managers played by institutions is important in Taiwan's companies. Echoing these two features, empirical results suggest a low inflection point for the nonlinear relation between managerial ownership and performance. Moreover, the impact of managerial ownership on performance varies between different identities of managers and depends on whether the firm is group-affiliated or independent. There is also evidence to show that the relation between individual and institutional managerial ownership is complementary at low levels of ownership and becomes substitutive as ownership gets higher.     

Investor protection and cash holdings: Evidence from US cross-listing

This paper examines (i) whether the level of firms’ cash holdings differ depending on the strength of investor protection, (ii) whether excess cash holdings are valued more with better investor protection, and (iii) whether cross-listed firms that improve investor protection through “bonding” hold relatively more cash than non-cross-listed firms. We analyze 1405 ADR firms and their corresponding matched firms from 39 different countries and document that ADR firms have significantly higher cash holdings relative to their non-cross-listed peers, especially in recent years. The increase in cash holdings is much higher for emerging market firms because of their transition from particularly poor home country investor protection and accounting standards before cross-listing to much higher standards after cross-listing. In addition, firms with level III ADR listing, which represents the strongest investor protection, have higher cash holdings relative to other types of ADR firms.     

Ownership structure and financial constraints: Evidence from a structural estimation

This article examines the impact of the divergence between corporate insiders' control rights and cash-flow rights on firms' external finance constraints via generalized method of moments estimation of an investment Euler equation. Using a large sample of U.S. firms during the 1994-2002 period, we find that the shadow value of external funds is significantly higher for companies with a wider insider control-ownership divergence, suggesting that companies whose corporate insiders have larger excess control rights are more financially constrained. The effect of insider excess control rights on external finance constraints is more pronounced for firms with higher degrees of informational opacity and for firms with financial misreporting, and is moderated by institutional ownership. The results show that the agency problems associated with the control-ownership divergence can have a real impact on corporate financial and investment outcomes.     

Determinants of corporate cash holdings: Evidence from spin-offs

We study the factors that influence the cash allocation decision around a spin-off, using variables suggested by the trade-off theory, and controlling for the possible endogeneity of leverage and cash ratios. Spin-offs provide an opportunity to examine the determinants of cash allocation at the margin at the time of creation of a new entity. Our results indicate that managers allocate higher cash ratios to smaller firms, and firms with high research and development expense ratio, low net working capital ratio, and low leverage. Thus, higher cash ratios are correlated with difficulty of raising external capital and reduced availability of cash from internal sources. In addition, managers also base the cash allocation on observable immediate growth opportunities instead of on long-term possible growth. An analysis of excess cash ratios, defined as the difference between the actual and predicted cash ratios, indicate that firms are, on average, allocated less cash than suggested by trade-off models, and this deviation in allocated cash from predicted levels is explained only by concurrent profitability of the firms (a pecking order theory implication).     

Does the type of ownership control matter? Evidence from China’s listed companies

By tracing the identity of large shareholders, we group China’s listed companies into those controlled by state asset management bureaus (SAMBs), state owned enterprises (SOEs) affiliated to the central government (SOECGs), SOEs affiliated to the local government (SOELGs), and Private investors. We argue that these distinct types of owners have different objectives and motivations and this will affect how they exercise their control rights over the firms they invest in. In particular, we contend that private ownership of listed firms in China is not necessarily superior to certain types of state ownership. To test our arguments we investigate the relative efficiency of state versus private ownership of listed firms and the efficiency of various forms of state ownership. The empirical results indicate that the operating efficiency of Chinese listed companies varies across the type of controlling shareholder. SOECG controlled firms perform best and SAMB and Private controlled firms perform worst. SOELG controlled firms are in the middle. The results are consistent with our predictions.     

The adverse selection effect of corporate cash reserve: Evidence from acquisitions solely financed by stock

Corporate cash reserve has an adverse selection effect. Specifically, if investors know a company does not have to issue to invest, an attempt to do so sends a strong signal of overvaluation. This notion has not been explicitly studied in the extant empirical literature, despite its intuitiveness. Using a sample of acquisitions solely financed by stock to exclude the potential complications of free cash flow, I find that announcement returns are lower for a bidder with a higher excess cash reserve. This effect is stronger in hot equity market years or when a bidder's standalone value is more difficult to evaluate. I also find evidence supporting the idea that targets request cash payment to remove “lemon” bidders in normal (non-hot equity market) years, but accept too many stock offers in hot equity market years. After acquisitions, high-excess-cash-reserve bidders operationally outperform low-excess-cash-reserve bidders. Further, they spend more funds on reducing debt but not more on investments, compared with low-excess-cash-reserve bidders. Combined, these results show that cash reserve has information costs. Further, they highlight the importance of the two-sided information asymmetry framework of Rhodes-Kropf and Viswanathan (2004) in describing merger outcomes without resorting to behavioral or agency explanations.     

Tunneling or propping: Evidence from connected transactions in China

Friedman et al. (2003) develop a model in which, in equilibrium, controlling shareholders may choose either tunneling or propping of their listed companies depending on the magnitude of an adverse shock and the magnitude of the private benefits of control. In this paper, we employ connected transaction data from China to test the implications of their model. We hypothesize that, when listed companies are financially healthy (in financial distress), their controlling shareholders are more likely to conduct connected transactions to tunnel (prop up) their listed companies and the market reacts unfavorably (favorably) to the announcement of these transactions. Our empirical findings strongly support our hypotheses. We also find that all of the transaction types in our sample can be used for tunneling or propping depending on different financial situations of the firms. Finally, political connection is negatively associated with the announcement effect. Overall, our analysis supports Friedman et al.'s (2003) model by furnishing clear evidence for propping and tunneling to occur in the same company but at different times.     

Corporate social responsibility and stakeholder value maximization: Evidence from mergers

Using a large sample of mergers in the US, we examine whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) creates value for acquiring firms' shareholders. We find that compared with low CSR acquirers, high CSR acquirers realize higher merger announcement returns, higher announcement returns on the value-weighted portfolio of the acquirer and the target, and larger increases in post-merger long-term operating performance. They also realize positive long-term stock returns, suggesting that the market does not fully value the benefits of CSR immediately. In addition, we find that mergers by high CSR acquirers take less time to complete and are less likely to fail than mergers by low CSR acquirers. These results suggest that acquirers' social performance is an important determinant of merger performance and the probability of its completion, and they support the stakeholder value maximization view of stakeholder theory.     

The impact of investor protection law on corporate policy and performance: Evidence from the blue sky laws

Recent studies have debated the impact of investor protection law on corporate behavior and value. I exploit the staggered passage of state securities fraud statutes (“blue sky laws”) in the United States to estimate the causal effects of investor protection law on firm financing decisions and investment activity. The statutes induce firms to increase dividends, issue equity, and grow in size. The laws also facilitate improvements in operating performance and market valuations. Overall, the evidence is strongly supportive of theoretical models that predict investor protection law has a significant impact on corporate policy and performance.     

Expropriation through loan guarantees to related parties: Evidence from China

We identify and analyze a sample of publicly traded Chinese firms that issued loan guarantees to their related parties (usually the controlling block holders), thereby expropriating wealth from minority shareholders. Our results show that the issuance of related guarantees is less likely at smaller firms, at more profitable firms and at firms with higher growth prospects. We also find that the identity and ownership of block holders affect the likelihood of expropriation. In addition, we use this sample to provide new evidence on the relation between tunneling and proxies for firm value and financial performance. We find that Tobin’s Q, ROA and dividend yield are significantly lower, and that leverage is significantly higher, at firms that issued related guarantees.     

Corporate performance, managerial ownership and endogeneity: A simultaneous equations analysis for the Athens stock exchange

This paper investigates the relationship between managerial ownership and firm performance by considering the endogenous nature of the ownership variables. We conducted our analysis by applying a simultaneous equations framework. We empirically controlled the direction and significance of this relationship, using a panel comprised of 146 firms quoted on the Athens Stock Exchange between 2000 and 2004. The main findings of our analysis indicated that when managerial ownership is treated as endogenous, there is a positive impact on corporate value. Given the particularly high degree of managerial ownership that is observed in the firms listed in the Athens Stock Exchange, we argue that the estimated positive relationship can be mainly explained by the existing high levels of managerial ownership.     

Ownership structure,corporate governance and analyst following: A study of French listed firms

This study investigates the effects of some characteristics of the French corporate governance model – deemed to foster entrenchment and facilitate private benefits extraction – on the extent of analyst following. The results show that analysts are more likely to follow firms both with high discrepancy level between ownership and control and those controlled through pyramiding. These findings provide empirical support to the argument that minority shareholders value private information on firms with high expropriation likelihood, asking thence for more analyst services. Additional findings show that analysts are reticent to follow firms managed by controlling family members. This is, in part, explained by these firms’ reliance on private communication channels rather than public disclosure, producing a poor informational environment.     

Ownership structure,risk and performance in the European banking industry

We compare the performance and risk of a sample of 181 large banks from 15 European countries over the 1999–2004 period and evaluate the impact of alternative ownership models, together with the degree of ownership concentration, on their profitability, cost efficiency and risk. Three main results emerge. First, after controlling for bank characteristics, country and time effects, mutual banks and government-owned banks exhibit a lower profitability than privately owned banks, in spite of their lower costs. Second, public sector banks have poorer loan quality and higher insolvency risk than other types of banks while mutual banks have better loan quality and lower asset risk than both private and public sector banks. Finally, while ownership concentration does not significantly affect a bank’s profitability, a higher ownership concentration is associated with better loan quality, lower asset risk and lower insolvency risk. These differences, along with differences in asset composition and funding mix, indicate a different financial intermediation model for the different ownership forms.