Corporate governance quality and financial leverage: Evidence from China

This study explores the ways of how corporate governance quality affects firms' financial leverage using a panel sample of non-financial listed firms in China during 2000–2018. Empirical results indicate that improved corporate governance quality has a robust and negative effect on financial leverage for the full sample and subsample by ownership, industry, scale, etc. This negative effect is mediated by corporate internal and equity financing. Furthermore, in terms of the corporate performance, we show that financial leverage significantly reduces financial performance, especially during the economic downturn, and it could be offset by the improved corporate governance quality.     

Can local policy uncertainty curtail corporate speculation on financial assets?

Using a hand-collected data set of city-level local official's turnover in China, we find that the average financial investments of listed non-financial firms decrease significantly in the spike of local political uncertainty, i.e., when upon the turnover of city head occurs. The decrease in financial investment still occurs upon the predicted timing of city heads' turnover. The effect is more prominent for firms with high financial distress risk and weaker corporate governance, i.e., those with higher speculative motives. Overall, this paper reveals that local political uncertainty discourages firms' speculative motives of investing in financial securities.     

Multiple corporate governance attributes and the cost of capital – Evidence from Germany

This paper investigates the extent to which corporate governance affects the cost of debt and equity capital of German exchange-listed companies. I examine corporate governance along three dimensions: financial information quality, ownership structure and board structure. The results suggest that firms with high levels of financial transparency and bonus compensations face lower cost of equity. In addition, block ownership is negatively related to firms' cost of equity when the blockholders are other firms, managers or founding-family members. Consistent with the conjecture that agency costs increase with firm size, I find significant cost of debt effects only in the largest German companies. Here, the creditors demand lower cost of debt from firms with block ownerships held by corporations or banks. My findings demonstrate that a uniform set of governance attributes is unlikely to satisfy suppliers of debt and equity capital equally.     

Corporate social responsibility orientation and textual features of financial disclosures

This paper examines the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) orientation and textual attributes of financial disclosures. Using a large U.S. sample from 1999 to 2017, we find that firms with high CSR orientation provide more readable disclosures and use a less ambiguous tone in their annual reports. These findings are consistent with the notion that managers in CSR-conscious firms adhere to high ethical standards and commit to improving the transparency of their firms' financial disclosures. Our results are robust to alternative measures of readability and CSR performance, potential endogeneity, and sampling methods. Moreover, in a cross-sectional analysis, we show that the impact of CSR on corporate readability/tone ambiguity is more pronounced for firms with weak corporate governance. Overall, the results suggest that CSR serves as a substitute for traditional corporate governance mechanisms to ensure transparent disclosure.     

Corporate Governance,Companies’ Disclosure Practices and Market Transparency: A Cross Country Study

We examine the link between corporate governance, companies’ disclosure practices and their equity market transparency in a study of more than 5,000 listed companies in 23 countries covering the period 1 January 2003 to 31 December 2008. Our results confirm the belief that better‐governed firms make more frequent disclosures to the market. We also find greater disclosure in common law relative to code law countries. However firms with better governance in both code and common law countries make more frequent disclosures. We measure market transparency by the timeliness of prices. In contrast to single country studies, results show, for the 23 countries collectively, better corporate governance is associated with less timely share prices. This would suggest that a firm substitutes better corporate governance for transparency. We are thus led to the conclusion that even if information is disclosed more frequently by better‐governed firms, it does not necessarily follow that information is reflected in share prices on a timelier basis.     

Corporate governance in the 2007–2008 financial crisis: Evidence from financial institutions worldwide

This paper investigates the influence of corporate governance on financial firms' performance during the 2007–2008 financial crisis. Using a unique dataset of 296 financial firms from 30 countries that were at the center of the crisis, we find that firms with more independent boards and higher institutional ownership experienced worse stock returns during the crisis period. Further exploration suggests that this is because (1) firms with higher institutional ownership took more risk prior to the crisis, which resulted in larger shareholder losses during the crisis period, and (2) firms with more independent boards raised more equity capital during the crisis, which led to a wealth transfer from existing shareholders to debtholders. Overall, our findings add to the literature by examining the corporate governance determinants of financial firms' performance during the 2007–2008 crisis.     

Shadow banking of non-financial firms: Arbitrage between formal and informal credit markets in China

In China's credit markets with financial repression, state-controlled non-financial firms (SOEs) are privileged in gaining access to bank credit, while non-SOEs, especially those small- and medium-sized firms, are disadvantaged. Corporate re-lending emerges as a response wherein the former secure bank loans and then re-lend to the latter. We document the characteristics of inter-corporate loans from a sample of legal cases. We employ four empirical strategies to conduct a forensic study of re-lending by detecting abnormal relations between financial accounts of listed firms. State-controlled companies conduct more re-lending, and firms with better growth opportunities, stronger corporate governance, and more financial constraints engage less. We compare re-lending with entrusted loans and find that firms extending nonaffiliated entrusted loans conduct re-lending actively, while firms offering affiliated entrusted loans do not. We also compare inter-corporate loans with micro-credit company loans in a review of legal cases.     

The Impact of Liquidity on Debt Maturity After a Financial Crisis: Evidence from the Gulf Cooperation Council Region

This article contributes to the existent literature on corporate debt maturity by studying a new channel through which firms may mitigate the effects of a major economic downturn such as the 2008 global financial crisis. More specifically, using a sample of 208 listed firms in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region, we find that an increase in firms’ current ratios after the crisis is associated with an increase in long-term financing. We also find that a financially constrained firm can still access long-term financing if its current ratio after the crisis is beyond a specific threshold. Additionally, we highlight the differences in the typical drivers of debt structure between GCC countries and industries.     

机构投资者在上市公司治理结构中的角色分析——基于盈余稳健性的视角

本文选取我国沪深两市A股上市公司2009—2013年之间的非金融类上市公司作为研究样本,通过非平衡面板数据和固定效应回归模型进行实证分析。研究发现,机构投资者持股比例对公司盈余稳健性呈负相关关系,即机构投资者对上市公司并没有发挥监督治理效应。     

Financialization and Corporate Performance in China: Promotion or Inhibition?

Using a sample of Chinese listed firms for the period 2009 to 2018, we analyze the relationship between the financialization of non-financial corporations (NFCs) and corporate performance from both long-term and short-term perspectives. Our results show that the impact of financialization on firm performance is not simply a crowding-out or pulling effect but rather depends on the type of financial assets held by the firms. The holdings of investment financial assets generally have a pulling effect on both the short-term performance and market expectations of a firm's future profits as proxied by Tobin's Q, but they crowd out the innovation activities that are critical to long-term performance. Although monetary financial assets positively affect corporate profitability, they inhibit the increase of return on invested capital and long-term performance. Additionally, compared with monetary financial assets, investment financial assets play a more important role in promoting short-term performance, although the crowding-out effect on innovation activities is more prominent for investment financial assets. Furthermore, this paper also concludes that compared with manufacturing and non-state-owned enterprises (NSOEs), the role of financialization in promoting the performance of non-manufacturing and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) is more significant.     

Bank risk-taking and corporate investment: Evidence from the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–2009

In this paper, we explore the relation between the banking sector's risk-taking and a firm's investment (“corporate investment”). Specifically, we ask whether firms' cash holdings moderate the effect of the banking sector's risk-taking on corporate investment. Based on a panel sample of publicly listed non-financial firms in 15 EU countries during the period 1990–2015, we document several key findings. First, both cash holdings and the banking sector's risk-taking are positively associated with corporate investment. Second, bank loan growth, which roughly captures the supply of bank credit, is not related to corporate investment. Third, firms with smaller cash holdings disproportionately invest more than do firms with larger cash holdings during periods of higher risk-taking by the banking sector.     

基于主成份分析的上市公司治理水平体系构建

全球金融危机的爆发与蔓延突显出公司治理对风险防范的重要性,政府监管层、上市公司以及投资者自身都产生了对公司治理进行评价的客观要求。本文将公司治理体系分为股权结构、董事会治理、经理层治理、信息披露及透明度、伦理维度五个层面,运用主成份分析方法来寻求上述五个层面各代理变量的线性组合,构建了上市公司治理水平体系。     

The Real and Accrual-based Earnings Management Behaviors: Evidence from the Split Share Structure Reform in China

This paper investigates the earnings management activities in Chinese listed firms and the impact of the split share structure reform (SSSREF). We demonstrate that Chinese listed firms exhibited a long-term positive relationship between real and accrual-based earnings management activities over the 2002–2011 period. This reflects the environment of weak investor protection and lack of effective corporate governance in China. Our results also indicate that the SSSREF in China has not fundamentally improved firms' quality of financial information. This may be because ownership concentration remains high. However, it is of interest that the reform has created an incentive alignment effect exogenously. We find that firms' use of discretionary accruals was constrained, and they have consequently shifted to less detectable and under-scrutinized real earnings activities after the reform. This shift is similar to that seen with the direct regulatory changes in accounting reporting rules on firms' earnings behaviors in developed countries where the investor protection environment is strong. We suggest that firms' shifting between the accrual and real-based earnings methods is an overlooked area for investors to consider in the emerging market context, and may require the attention of regulators.     

Corporate governance,capital structure and firm performance: Evidence from Thailand

We examine the relationship between corporate governance and firm performance for a panel sample of 493 firms of non-financial firms in Thailand during the period 2001–2014. We find that for the full sample, corporate governance is not associated with financial leverage and firm performance. Leverage has a positive effect on firm performance. When we split firms into small and large firm subsamples, we observe some influence of corporate governance. The negative effect of audit committee size on firm performance is evident for large firms while the effect of audit reputation on firm performance is evident for small firms only. Furthermore, financial leverage mediates the effect of audit committee size on firm performance for the large firms.     

上市公司财务状况分类研究

如何对众多上市公司的财务状况进行合理分类 ,判别公司的财务处境 ,进而指导公司的财务行为 ,对于公司财务政策的制定具有重要意义。本文突破以往文献将企业财务状况仅仅基于“好”与“坏”标准进行简单分类、即财务困境企业和非财务困境企业的界限 ,在理论上首次将公司的财务状况分为五类 ,即财务闲置、财务充盈、财务均衡、财务困境和财务破产。实证研究表明 ,我国上市公司确存在五种财务状况 ,支持理论假设 ,进一步 ,我们发现 ,中国上市公司普遍存在财务状况不佳的现象 ,隐性财务破产的上市公司多于证券市场上实际披露的数目。     

美国货币政策推升了新兴市场国家非金融企业杠杆率吗？

全球金融危机后,美国量化宽松货币政策的实施导致全球流动性异常充裕,对新兴市场国家非金融企业外部融资环境造成显著影响。本文运用28个新兴市场国家2003-2015年非金融类上市企业财务数据和美国影子利率数据对美国货币政策调整与新兴市场国家非金融企业杠杆率变动之间的关系进行了实证分析。结果显示,美国影子利率与新兴市场国家非金融企业杠杆率变动之间存在显著负相关关系,即美国影子利率的降低会促使新兴市场国家非金融企业杠杆率出现更大幅度的上涨。进一步地,这一影响在融资约束程度较高的企业、外部融资依赖度较高的行业以及资本账户开放程度较高但汇率弹性僵化的国家表现得更为显著。上述发现意味着新兴市场国家在调控企业部门杠杆率的过程中,除要考虑国内因素外,也应高度重视美国货币政策的变化。     

The impact of foreign board membership on firm value

This study examines the effect of foreign (Anglo-American) board membership on corporate performance measured in terms of firm value (Tobin’s Q). Using a sample of firms with headquarters in Norway or Sweden the study indicates a significantly higher value for firms that have outsider Anglo-American board member(s), after a variety of firm-specific and corporate governance related factors have been controlled for. We argue that this superior performance reflects the fact that these companies have successfully broken away from a partly segmented domestic capital market by “importing” an Anglo-American corporate governance system. Such an “import” signals a willingness on the part of the firm to expose itself to improved corporate governance and enhances its reputation in the financial market.     

The effect of earnings management on firm performance: The moderating role of corporate governance quality

This paper investigates the relationship between earnings management and financial performance of firms in Anglophone sub-Saharan African Countries in a dynamic framework. The study shows how this relationship is moderated by aggregate disclosure and best-practice corporate governance quality metrics. The findings indicate that earnings management's performance effects persist even after controlling for dynamic endogeneity, simultaneity, and unobserved time-invariant heterogeneity inherent in the earnings management and performance relationship. Again, the results support the prediction of agency theory regarding the efficient monitoring effect of adherence to best-practice internal governance systems in constraining firms' earnings management practices and subsequently enhancing firms' performance. Moreover, the study's findings regarding the positive effect of earnings management on performance, which suggests efficiency motives behind earnings management practices in Africa, demonstrate that the African context is uniquely different from other emerging markets that report opportunistic motives. Concerning the moderating role, our study reveals that the positive effect of earnings management on the financial performance of firms tends to be stronger in the presence of corporate governance quality.     

The Value Relevance of Transparency and Corporate Governance in Malaysia Before and After the Asian Financial Crisis

This paper investigates whether the value relevance of financial reporting transparency and corporate governance in Malaysia increased after the Asian financial crisis of 1997. Our sample comprised 94 companies listed on the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange in both 1996 and 2001. The disclosure indexes were significantly value relevant for 2001 but not for 1996. Our corporate governance measure was also significantly value relevant for 2001 but not for 1996. Accordingly, it would appear that after the Asian financial crisis, investors have become more sensitized to transparency and corporate governance issues.     

Does corporate governance transparency affect the accuracy of analyst forecasts?

Using country‐level proxies for corporate governance transparency, this paper investigates how differences in transparency across 21 countries affect the average forecast accuracy of analysts for the country's firms. The association between financial transparency and analyst forecast accuracy has been well documented in previous published literature; however, the association between governance transparency and analyst forecast accuracy remains unexplored. Using the two distinct country‐level factors isolated by Bushman et al. (2004 ), governance transparency and financial transparency, we investigate whether corporate governance information impacts on the accuracy of earnings forecasts over and above financial information. We document that governance transparency is positively associated with analyst forecast accuracy after controlling for financial transparency and other variables. Furthermore, our results suggest that governance‐related disclosure plays a bigger role in improving the information environment when financial disclosures are less transparent. Our empirical evidence also suggests that the significance of governance transparency on analyst forecast accuracy is higher when legal enforcement is weak.