Venture capital certification of small and medium-sized enterprises towards banks: evidence from China

Through a proprietary dataset of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) on China's National Equities Exchange and Quotations (NEEQ), we examine the impact of venture capital (VC) backup on access to bank loans by SMEs. We find that VC backup can help SMEs obtain more bank loans under better conditions and significantly relieve their financing constraint. This is especially meaningful for private SMEs, those in high-tech, in regions of less-developed banking industry, or with lower quality accounting information. This study may have policy implications as a pilot ‘combined debt-equity financing’ discussion in the context of the largest bank-based economy.     

The role of foreign and domestic venture capital in innovation: evidence from China

This paper analyses the different effects of foreign venture capital (FVC) and domestic venture capital (DVC) on innovation for IPOs. Using patent counts to measure innovation, the results indicate that FVC-backed firms are less innovative than DVC-backed firms. Our findings are robust after controlling for the sample selection bias using a propensity score matching approach. One possible underlying mechanism through which FVCs nurture less innovation is their inferior geographic proximity to investment targets.     

The dynamics of earnings management in IPOs and the role of venture capital

We investigate the dynamics of earnings management (EM) in IPOs and the role of venture capitalist (VC) in hampering such practice. We study the behavior of EM in four phases: Pre-IPO, IPO, Lock-up and Post-lock-up. We find that VC-sponsored firms tend to do more EM in the Pre-IPO period, and less in two subsequent periods. These results are distinct for those of Wongsunwai (2013), for which, VC-sponsored firms do less EM only in the IPO period. We also find that VC and non-VC-sponsored firms do EM around the IPO in distinct fashions. Non-VC-sponsored firms inflate earnings during the IPO period and deflate in the Lock-up and Post-lock-up periods. VC-sponsored firms inflate earnings in the Pre-IPO period and deflate earnings only in the Lock-up period. Our results are robust with respect to how one measures EM and the statistical methods used.     

Debt financing,venture capital,and the performance of initial public offerings

We examine the roles of two financial intermediaries, lenders and venture capitalists, in a sample of more than 6000 IPO firms during 1980–2012. Venture capitalists and lenders generally fund different types of firms and, on average, are substitutes; however, in some instances we observe interactions and complementary roles between the two funding sources. Firms with high debt have lower valuation uncertainty, and lower initial day returns than those backed by venture capital. However, firms with high debt levels underperform in the long-run, especially those without venture capital. We provide some evidence that firms backed by reputable venture capitalists perform better.     

Relational venture capital financing of serial founders

I study how often and why a serial founder receives financing for his new company from a venture capital (VC) firm that also invested in his previous company. One in 10 VC investments leads to a repeated relationship and one in three serial founders enters into a repeated relationship with any previous VC firm. A repeated relationship is more likely when the relational VC firm has acquired more private information about the founder, but less likely if the founder’s new venture has a bad fit with the VC firm’s geographic or industry focus. My findings add to the literature on relational financing by showing that the preservation of information is an important motivation for relational financing when screening and monitoring costs are high. Yet, repeated relationships are discontinued because investors also respond to information problems by specializing in certain types of firms. Finally, I find evidence of non-relational investments being passed onto trusted VC syndication partners.     

The optimal portfolio of start-up firms in venture capital finance

Venture capitalists (VCs) not only finance but also add value to start-up companies. Advising firms is time consuming and creates a trade-off between intensity of advice and portfolio size. We jointly determine the optimal number of portfolio companies and the intensity of managerial advice. Diminishing returns to advice per firm call for a larger portfolio. With progressively increasing managerial effort cost, however, a larger number crowds out advice to each individual firm. As they receive less support, entrepreneurs request a larger profit share, making further portfolio expansion eventually unprofitable. Comparative static analysis shows how optimal portfolio size responds to venture returns and other parameters.     

Monitoring or colluding: the role of venture capital investors in the IPO process

We argue and provide evidence that instead of playing a monitoring role, venture capital (VC) investors collude with controlling shareholders in the IPO process of Chinese non‐state‐owned enterprises (non‐SOEs). We show that VC‐backed IPOs’ applications are more likely to be approved by regulators, especially in firms with excess control rights, but have worse post‐IPO performance. Through investing in firms with excess control rights, VC investors are able to make higher exit returns. We further document that VC investors’ role in the IPO process is stronger when they have political connections, hold higher ownership, and when they make pre‐IPO investment.     

The value of ongoing venture capital investment to newly listed firms

We examine whether the market values continuing venture capital (VC) investor involvement in firms post-IPO. Compared to the US, Australian VC investors exit their investments post-IPO by on-market sales rather than distribution of holdings to their investors. Lockup periods tend to be longer and ownership thresholds for reporting trades lower. We find that the market responds positively to buy transactions, negatively to sell transactions of VC investors and negatively to the resignation of VC directors. These results are consistent with VC investors in the firm having a positive influence and creating value from which the VCs and other shareholders benefit.     

论我国中小企业投融资体制的建立

目前，在我国中小企业已逾千万家，其所创造的产值、利润和安排的就业机会，已使其成为国民经济的重要组成部分，并成为我国经济持续增长的重要推动力量。然而，随着我国经济市场化进程的加快，中小企业面临着许多新的困难，尤其是中小企业的投融资问题，已成为现阶段制约我国中小企业生存与发展的主要制度障碍。本文拟就建立我国中小企业投融资体制及其相关问题，谈一些个人浅见。     

The exit decision in the European venture capital market

This article analyses the exit decision in the European venture capital market, studying when to exit and how it interacts with the exit form. Using a competing risks model we study the impact on the exit decision of the characteristics of venture capital investors, of their investments and of contracting variables. Our results reveals that the hazard functions are non-monotonic for all exit forms and suggest that, in Europe, Initial Public Offering candidates take longer to be selected than trade sales. Moreover our results show that, in Europe, venture capitalists associated with financial institutions have quicker exits (stronger for trade sales), and highlight the importance of contracting variables on the exit decision. An unexpected result is that the presence on the board of directors leads to longer investment durations.     

The effects of private equity and venture capital on sales and employment growth in small and medium-sized businesses

We study the effects private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) financing have on small and mid-sized single entity business establishments from 1995 to 2009. We focus on single entity establishments to cleanly examine the impact of PE and VC financing on establishments’ organic growth. This study reveals that PE and VC financing have positive impacts on single entity business establishments’ net sales and employment growth. The impact of PE financing on establishments’ growth is slower and smaller than VC financing. However, we find that the benefit of PE financing lasts longer than VC financing. We also find that ethnic minority, female, and foreign business owners are less likely to receive PE and VC financing. Finally, we find evidence that although establishments with government contracts are more likely to receive PE and VC financing, those contracts fail to produce marginal post-funding growth and employment benefits.     

The role of regulatory capital in international bank mergers and acquisitions

When investigating the role of regulatory capital in bank mergers and acquisitions (M&As) we finds that US targets are better capitalized than their acquirers and non-acquired peers and that US banks maintain higher capital levels than European banks. Thus, US banks strategically raise their capital levels to avoid regulatory scrutiny. Furthermore, more value is created for targets with high excess capital and in M&As involving targets with considerably higher excess-capital ratios than their acquirers. Thus, the excess regulatory capital hypothesis is supported. Finally, market prices reflect the influence that capital has on the probability of the merger's regulatory approval.     

The price of rapid exit in venture capital-backed IPOs

This paper proposes an explanation for two empirical puzzles surrounding initial public offerings (IPOs). Firstly, it is well documented that IPO underpricing increases during “hot issue” periods. Secondly, venture capital (VC) backed IPOs are less underpriced than non-venture capital backed IPOs during normal periods of activity, but the reverse is true during hot issue periods: VC backed IPOs are more underpriced than non-VC backed ones. This paper shows that when IPOs are driven by the initial investor’s desire to exit from an existing investment in order to finance a new venture, both the value of the new venture and the value of the existing firm to be sold in the IPO drive the investor’s choice of price and fraction of shares sold in the IPO. When this is the case, the availability of attractive new ventures increases equilibrium underpricing, which is what we observe during hot issue periods. Moreover, I show that underpricing is affected by the severity of the moral hazard problem between an investor and the firm’s manager. In the presence of a moral hazard problem the degree of equilibrium underpricing is more sensitive to changes in the value of the new venture. This can explain why venture capitalists, who often finance firms with more severe moral hazard problems, underprice IPOs less in normal periods, but underprice more strongly during hot issue periods. Further empirical implications relating the fraction of shares sold and the degree of underpricing are presented.      

Venture capital investment and institutional factors: Evidence from China

This paper examines how venture capital (VC) investment and institutional factors affect the performance of VC-backed companies in China. Compared with non-VC-backed companies, we find that VC-backed companies slightly underperform in profitability but have considerably higher market value. Furthermore, VC investment does not help companies mitigate the negative impact of institutional factors on profitability; however, it conveys beneficial effects that help companies moderate the negative impact on market value. We also provide evidence that the impact of VC investment and institutional factors is more pronounced for non-state-owned companies, companies with poor corporate governance, and companies with higher research and development investment.     

Bank interconnectedness and financial stability: The role of bank capital

This paper builds a network model to study the relation between financial stability and interconnectedness among banks. In the model, banks adopt a Value-at-Risk rule to determine capital ratios. It is shown that interconnectedness may hurt financial stability by amplifying the banks’ mistakes of underestimating risk, and that interconnectedness increases systemic risk. The results in the paper suggest that financial integration may hurt financial stability, and that bank interconnectedness is more harmful when the economy turns abruptly from boom to recession. In addition, banks should be given incentives to reduce interconnectedness if systemic risk is a serious concern for regulators.     

The impact of IMF term loans on US bank creditors’ equity values: an event study of South Korea's case

This study investigates whether the IMF term loan announcements to South Korea in late November and early December 1997 significantly increased the implicit value of the U.S. bank loans and investments to South Korea and hence, the equity values of its U.S. bank creditors. Using both the market model and the SUR model, this paper examines the potential abnormal performance of a total of 230 U.S. banks during mid-November to early December 1997. The findings show that there was a statistically significant positive equity response to the international bank creditors during the major event announcements. Further, the evidence shows the existence of different pricing behavior of different groups: groups that were more exposed experienced a more positive equity-price response.     

Performance differentiation: cutting losses and maximizing profits of private equity and venture capital investments

Recent research has pointed out the need to differentiate between good versus poor performance of venture capital and private equity investments and to analyze the factors that determine the ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ of a fund. This study examines the different contractual and behavioral characteristics and their influence on the positive and negative performances of private equity investments. Specifically, we analyze how fund managers apply tools and investment behavior to mitigate risks and maximize returns. The empirical investigation of these questions is based on a merged dataset, which combines the Venture Economics and CEPRES databases. It includes a total of 1,011 investments made by 137 different funds that belong to 54 private equity and venture capital firms worldwide over the period from 1979 to 2003. Our results confirm that the reduction of losses and the maximization of investment profits have different antecedents. Although losses are minimized by the use of convertibles and by increasing the venture capital firms’ accumulated experience, profits are increased by the potential of the fund’s management to allocate resources to portfolio companies. Our findings contribute to the understanding of the determinants of venture capital and private equity returns by differentiating between the mitigation of risks and the maximization of profits.      

The pass-through of bank capital requirements to corporate lending spreads

We study the impact of higher bank capital requirements on corporate lending spreads using granular bank- and loan-level data. Our empirical strategy employs the heterogeneity in capital requirements across banks and time of implementation in Switzerland. We find that changes in the capital deviation from the regulatory minimum affect lending spreads asymmetrically. In response to a reduction in the capital deviation, banks with deficits with respect to their risk-weighted capital requirement raise spreads relative to banks with surpluses and de-leverage. Banks respond to higher requirements by raising spreads and, for deficit banks, by cutting lending.     

Predicting SME loan delinquencies during recession using accounting data and SME characteristics: The case of Greece

The objective of this paper is the comparison of various credit‐scoring models (i.e. binomial logistic regression, decision tree, multilayer perceptron neural network, radial basis function, and support vector machine) in evaluating the risk of small and micro enterprises' (SMEs') loan delinquencies based on accounting data and applicants' specific attributes. Exploiting a representative large data set of SMEs' loans granted by a large Greek commercial bank in the expansion period, we track the evolution of SMEs' delinquencies over the recession period August 2010 to July 2012. This time frame encompasses a period of manageable levels of delays (early recession period: August 2011–July 2012) and a period when delays were increased to a very high degree (deep recession period: August 2011–July 2012). Comparison of the employed credit‐scoring models during the early recession period shows that the multilayer perceptron neural network produces the highest predicting capacity, followed by the support vector machine model. As the crisis deepens, the support vector machine model presents the highest predicting accuracy, followed by the decision tree and then the multilayer perceptron model. Generally, the predictive performance of all credit‐scoring models seems to be substantially reduced as the recession escalates. Our paper has important implications for the proper financing of SMEs given their importance for the European economy.