Secret Recipe of IPO survival: ESG disclosure and performance

While ESG initiation and disclosure may help newly listed companies maintain a social license to operate, mitigate information asymmetry, and attract investor attention, it may impose significant costs on initial public offering (IPO) firms and magnify agency problems. Using a sample of 1102 IPOs issued in the U.S and the ESG data from MSCI between 1999 and 2016, the paper empirically tests the competing hypotheses and examines the influence of ESG disclosure and performance on the survivability of IPOs. We document that (1) voluntary ESG disclosure reduces IPO failure risks and improves long-run performance of IPO; (2) the sooner ESG information is disclosed after the IPO, the greater the likelihood of survival and better long-run performance; and (3) IPOs with better ESG score are less likely to fail, with the impact largely attributable to the company's social and governance performance. Our findings identify new failure risks for IPOs, supply evidence of value-relevance of ESG, and provide practical guidance for managers.     

Institutional investors and corporate environmental and financial performance

We propose a conceptual framework to illustrate that when three conditions hold, institutional investors moderate a positive relation between corporate financial performance and corporate environmental performance. We explore heterogeneities across institution types to demonstrate the importance of each condition. The moderating effect works through the channels of expert consulting and effective monitoring. Our results have important policy and practical implications given the global trend of ownership concentration in institutional investors and the projection that by 2025, one out of three dollars under professional management will be invested in corporate social responsibility assets.     

Carbon disclosure,carbon performance and financial performance: International evidence

This study examines how carbon performance affects carbon disclosure and how carbon disclosure affects financial performance. With a sample of global firms, the study analyses how relationships between carbon disclosure, carbon performance and financial performance vary in institutional contexts. Our results show that carbon disclosure positively affects carbon performance, consistent with the signalling theory. We find that carbon disclosure negatively (positively) affects financial performance in the short-term (long-term). Our findings have significant implications for investors as some firms use carbon disclosure as part of impression management. Our results help regulators to monitor carbon disclosure and assist investors with investment decisions.     

The role of accounting in financial disclosure

This paper examines the various demands facing accounting in attempting to supply diverse groups with differing needs the data they desire. Beginning with the notions that, first, accounting is trying to describe a complex stewardship relation and, second, that what we call accounting is in reality many accountings, it examines several current issues in financial disclosure. Essentially, it concludes that a complex set of economic relations must simultaneously rely on several distinct accountings to properly perform the task of disclosure. In general, this conclusion is viewed as desirable.     

Understanding resource deployment efficiency for ESG and financial performance: A DEA approach

COVID-19 has stimulated additional research interest on economic sustainability and ESG in both academia and industry. This study adopts a DEA approach to examine the efficiency of achieving ESG targets and their relationships with financial performance. Using MSCI ESG data from 2015 to 2019 on 1108 Chinese firms, we examine the ESG proportional and pillar mix efficiencies. The dominant strategies for our sampled firms are to improve overall ESG performance by enhancing the E and S pillars through sacrificing G’s performance. The second result shows a positive relationship between proportional efficiency and financial performance while a mixed relationship between pillar mix efficiency and financial performance. However, for the technology sector, there exists some trade-offs between ESG performance and financial performance. Specifically, relative to non-technology firms, improving proportional and pillar mix efficiencies for technology firms could result in some sacrifice in stock valuation.     

The performance of individual investors in structured financial products

This paper is the first to measure individual investors’ realized risk-adjusted performance in structured financial products, which represent one of the key financial innovations in recent times. Based on a large database of trades and portfolio holdings for 10,652 retail investors in discount and bonus certificates and common stocks, we find that (1) investors typically realize negative alphas in structured financial products, even when transaction costs are ignored. (2) Their underperformance increases with product complexity, which results from the higher implicit price premiums charged by the issuing banks for the more complex products and from the investors’ poor selection of products that have complex payoff specifications. (3) Investors also make poor choices when selecting the underlying assets for their structured product investments. This is merely a reflection of the poor stock selection abilities which also leads to a significant underperformance for their equity portfolios. (4) Certificate and stock investors are prone to the disposition effect. Overall, these findings suggest that retail investors may require some form of protection to avoid incurring these losses.     

The impact of institutional investors on ESG: Evidence from China

This paper studies the influence of institutional ownership on the Chinese A-shares' ESG performance. Findings reveal the positive improvement from institutional investors, and this impact is stronger in firms with better-expected ESG performance and low initial ESG performance. Besides, heterogeneous institutional investors have different influences, and only a pressure-resistant institution plays the promotion role. Further studies based on the period following the financial crisis and when emphasising the environmental protection policy reveal that financial motivation and reputation motivation could be the reason for institutional holding. Our findings are robust after using the instrumental variable analysis, controlling for firm fixed effects, and replacing institutional holdings, and could be beneficial for the governance of firms in China.     

Using corporate social responsibility performance to evaluate financial disclosure credibility

Due to the paucity of immediate and direct information about financial disclosure credibility, it is often difficult for investors to assess the credibility of financial disclosures (e.g. whether reported earnings are biased). Given this situation, the present study proposes and finds that investors use additional cues, such as information about corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance, to form overall impressions about management's honesty, credibility, and trustworthiness. Similar to other findings in the halo effect literature, we find that these overall impressions subsequently influence both investors' assessments of financial disclosure credibility and the prices they are willing to pay for a company's stock. The findings support the theoretical framework on financial disclosure credibility by (1) showing that management credibility is an important tool that investors use to assess disclosure credibility and (2) suggesting that management credibility is a multidimensional latent construct for which CSR performance can be one of several relevant indicators.     

The impact of carbon disclosure mandates on emissions and financial operating performance

Review of Accounting Studies - We examine the impact of a disclosure mandate for greenhouse gas emissions on firms’ subsequent emission levels and financial operating performance. For...     

The Asian financial crisis: The role of derivative securities trading and foreign investors in Korea

This paper is part of a larger research program pertaining to the role of derivatives during financial crisis and also part of the research pertaining to the causes of the Asian financial crisis. The Korean market is studied because of two reasons: (1) it is an important example of the Asian financial meltdown and (2) there is a detailed data set available of all transactions by different types of protagonists, including foreign investors. The results in this paper indicate that futures markets and trading by foreign investors played a key role during the Korean stock market turbulence in 1997.     

ESG投资能够促进银行创造流动性吗?——兼论经济政策不确定性的调节效应

当前在我国致力于实现“碳达峰、碳中和”目标的大背景下,银行能否通过ESG投资促进流动性创造,进而推动高质量发展具有重大战略意义。本文利用2009年第一季度至2020年第二季度中国36家上市银行的面板数据,实证分析ESG投资对银行流动性创造的影响,并将其置于经济政策不确定性条件下予以讨论。研究发现:第一,ESG投资整体上促进流动性创造,表现为对资产端和负债端流动性创造的促进作用,以及对表外流动性创造的抑制作用。从ESG投资结构看,环境保护投资和社会责任投资均抑制流动性创造,而公司治理投资则促进流动性创造。异质性分析表明,地方性银行和资本短缺银行的ESG投资对流动性创造具有更强的促进作用。第二,中介机制分析发现,ESG投资主要通过“盈利”和“风险”渠道促进流动性创造。第三,在经济政策不确定性上升时期,ESG投资对流动性创造的促进作用更加显著。从ESG投资分项看,经济政策不确定性会增强环境保护投资和社会责任投资对流动性创造的抑制作用,以及公司治理投资对流动性创造的促进作用。本文结论为充分发挥ESG投资作用并以此推动高质量发展提供了政策启示。     

Private disclosure and financial reporting

This article describes how large UK companies communicate with their institutional shareholders, and investigates how this private disclosure process relates to financial reporting. The article draws from case studies based on interviews with senior executives in 33 UK companies. Four insights into corporate disclosure arise from this case data. Firstly, a private disclosure process to institutional shareholders is outlined. Secondly, the private disclosure activity is recognised as a significant part of a larger corporate decision concerning public versus private voluntary disclosure. Thirdly, a range of factors are identified as encouraging private disclosure. These include the perceived limitations of financial reports (annual reports and interims), both as a disclosure mechanism in their own right and by comparison with private disclosure channels. Finally, despite these limitations, financial reports are recognised as a central component of a larger corporate disclosure system. The article therefore provides a novel insight in the role of financial reports in the larger corporate disclosure process, and ends by exploring new directions for research in financial reporting, including how the wider corporate disclosure system can be reformed in a systematic manner.     

ESG disclosure and technological innovation capabilities of the Chinese listed companies

The main objective of this study is to explore how ESG disclosure effectively promotes technological innovation capabilities (TIC) and also in different industries (green vs. high-tech). Further, examine the role of financing constraint (FC) in the relationship between the ESG disclosure and TIC. We employed the panel regression model, Causal step approach, Bootstrap mediation effect test, 2SLS, and GMM model. We used Bloomberg’s ESG disclosure score of China’s A-share listed companies from 2011 to 2019 (1); we found that the ESG disclosure has a significant relationship with corporate innovation indicators (OTI, STI, NSTI) and play a significant role in promoting TIC at different levels of corporate innovation (2) ESG disclosure of non-green (high-tech) industry is more effectively promote TIC than green (non-high tech) industry (3) ESG disclosure can promote corporate innovation by reducing the level of corporate financing constraints, and FC has a partial intermediary role between ESG and TIC.     

ESG performance and corporate risk-taking: Evidence from China

Corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) is vital for sustainable growth, while the motivation of corporate ESG engagement could decide whether ESG participation is green or greenwashing behavior. This paper attempts to understand the motivation of corporate ESG engagement from the firm's risk-taking perspective. Using Chinese publicly listed firm data from 2010 to 2020, we find that ESG rating significantly reduces corporate risk-taking. This finding still holds after a series of robustness tests to address potential endogeneity concerns and alternative risk-taking proxies. Furthermore, the marginal inhibitory impact of ESG on corporate risk-taking is more pronounced in firms with lower information transparency, weaker corporate governance and less external monitoring pressure. Our results shed essential insight on the trade-off between sustainable growth and corporate risk-taking behavior in a relatively weak investor protection institutional environment.     

Social disclosure, financial disclosure and the cost of equity capital

We test the relation between financial and social disclosure and the cost of equity capital for a sample of Canadian firms with year-ends in 1990, 1991 and 1992. We find that, consistent with prior research, the quantity and quality of financial disclosure is negatively related to the cost of equity capital for firms with low analyst following. Contrary to expectations, there is a significant positive relation between social disclosures and the cost of equity capital. This positive relationship is mitigated among firms with better financial performance. We consider some biases in social disclosures that may explain this result. We also note that social disclosures may benefit the firm through its effect on organizational stakeholders other than equity investors.     

Environmental,Social, and Governance (ESG) disclosure: A literature review

Voluntary nonfinancial Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) disclosure is a rapidly growing and increasingly important topic that has attracted great attention from both academic researchers and capital market participants in recent years. The objective of this survey study is to provide a comprehensive review of the ESG disclosure literature in accounting research with suggestions for the future. Specifically, we organize the literature into four categories: motivations for and consequences associated with ESG information, in addition to disclosure- and user-level characteristics with the potential to affect the observed outcome of information disclosure. We also discuss the key role of nonfinancial rating agencies as a new type of ESG information intermediary in capital markets and suggest opportunities for future research.     

The role of institutional investors in propagating the 2007 financial crisis in Southern Europe

The 2007 financial crisis has affected Southern European companies (Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Greek) more than others. From a Minskyan bubble-burst cycle perspective (Minsky, 1986), we study the relation between institutional ownership structure and corporate risk-taking for a sample of non-financial listed companies from Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece for the period 2001–2014. Our results suggest that the financial deregulation process, that lead to the financialization of the world economy before the 2007 financial crisis and the favourable macroeconomic scenario encouraged corporate risk-taking in those countries. We also find that the lack of effective control mechanisms provided an incentive for investment funds to assume a proactive role, encouraging companies to overinvest in risky projects.     

Cooperative social and environmental disclosure and financial performance of savings and credit cooperatives in Kenya

This study examines the association between cooperative social and environmental disclosure (CSED) and financial performance of deposit-taking savings and credit cooperatives (SACCOs) in Kenya. Using data comprising of 1272 observations for 212 deposit-taking SACCOs in Kenya over the period 2008–2013, panel OLS analyses are performed to establish the association between SACCOs' CSED levels and financial performance. The results reveal a relatively low level of CSED by deposit-taking SACCOs in Kenya at 29.3%. As a departure from findings in mainstream studies, the study reveals a negative association between CSED and financial performance. We argue that the negative association could be due to changed regulatory landscape or a signal that Kenyan SACCOs are transitioning to financially (profit) oriented goals. The results are useful to regulators and policy makers in designing an optimal disclosure policy for SACCOs.