Foreign institutional ownership and corporate cash holdings: Evidence from emerging economies

With the increased presence of foreign institutional investors in emerging stock markets, academic interest on the effects of foreign institutions on corporate managerial decisions has notably increased. This paper joins this debate by investigating the effects of foreign institutional ownership on cash holdings, a strategic corporate financing choice. Analysing a sample of firms from 23 emerging economies, the paper shows that, while foreign institutional ownership has a negative effect on cash holdings, it also increases the contribution of cash to firm valuation. These effects are potentially transmitted to cash through mitigation of agency conflicts and alleviation of financing constraints. In all, our findings suggest beneficial effects of foreign institutions on firms' financing structure, as foreign investors contribute to a more efficient and value-enhancing cash policy.     

Corporate ownership structure and the choice between bank debt and public debt

This article examines the relation between a borrowing firm's ownership structure and its choice of debt source using a novel data set on corporate ownership, control, and debt structures for 9,831 firms in 20 countries from 2001 to 2010. We find that the divergence between the control rights and cash-flow rights of a borrowing firm's largest ultimate owner has a significant negative impact on the firm's reliance on bank debt financing. In addition, we show that the control-ownership divergence affects other aspects of debt structure including debt maturity and security. Our results indicate that firms controlled by large shareholders with excess control rights may choose public debt financing over bank debt as a way of avoiding scrutiny and insulating themselves from bank monitoring.     

Determinants of Profit Reinvestment by Small Businesses in Emerging Economies

We investigate the cross‐country key factors of profit reinvestment decisions using data compiled by the World Bank from over 7,000 businesses in 36 developing countries. We find that, compared to the security of property rights, it is a firm's access to external financing that plays an important role in a firm's reinvestment decision in emerging economies. The extent of private ownership and the firm's competitiveness are additional significant factors correlated with its reinvestment decision. Furthermore, we uncover a firm size effect in that the above factors driving firm reinvestment decisions appears to impact small firms more than relatively larger firms.     

Shareholders' control rights,family ownership and the firm's leverage decisions

We investigate the association between controlling shareholders' ownership (CS_Own) and firms' leverage decisions in the Singaporean context. We examine whether the impact of ownership concentration on leverage differs across excess and lower control. We report that shareholders with excess control prefer leverage financing for an optimal capital structure and focus on value maximisation rather using leverage as a tool of minority shareholders' expropriation. Our analysis shows that firms capital structure significantly influences by the coalition of shareholders particularly decisions about leverage financing in addition to the firms' specific characteristics and institutional arrangements. Our empirical evidence shows that controlling shareholders with a lower fraction of equity are more concerned about limited holding thus prefer leverage over equity financing to inflate their equity stake to protect them from the potential takeovers and mergers. We report that capital structure decisions in Singapore are linked with the trade-off between the controlling shareholders' target of mitigating firm risk and their non-dilution entrenchment needs. Further, we found an inverted U-shaped association between control ownership and leverage financing. In terms of moderating effect of family-controlled ownership, our findings exhibit that leverage financing is less pronounced for family firms in Singapore due to the under-diversified investment portfolio.     

The financing behaviour of listed Chinese firms

This paper examines the corporate financing behaviour of listed companies in the People's Republic of China. Our results suggest that some determinants of firm leverage (e.g., size, asset tangibility, growth opportunities and profitability) commonly cited in studies on developed economies also appear to be important in China. In particular, the positive relationships that firm size and asset tangibility have with firm leverage are consistent with the predictions of the static trade-off capital structure model. However, these commonly quoted determinants function in a way different from that reported in developing countries. Moreover, we do not find that State ownership, legal person ownership and foreign ownership have important influences on the capital structure choices of Chinese firms. Given the tight regulatory control over equity issues and acute owner–manager incentive conflicts in State-owned firms, we also hypothesise, and find evidence to support, that Chinese firms have built-in incentives for raising equity. This provides one explanation of the negative effect of profitability on firm leverage and shows that some of the unique Chinese institutional features do help shape corporate financing behaviour.     

Obstacles to a global banking system: “Old Europe” versus “New Europe”

“Old Europe” – the developed nations of continental Europe – averages only about 15% foreign bank ownership, whereas “New Europe” – the transition nations of Eastern Europe – averages about 70%. Similar findings hold elsewhere in the world – developed nations tend to have much lower foreign bank ownership shares than developing nations. We examine the causes of the differences within Europe with an eye toward more general conclusions. Our findings suggest that the low foreign bank shares in “Old Europe” – and perhaps developed nations more generally – may primarily result from net comparative disadvantages for foreign banks and relatively high implicit government entry barriers. The high foreign penetration in “New Europe” – and perhaps developing nations more generally – may be due to net comparative advantages for foreign banks and low government entry barriers, particularly in nations that reduced their state bank ownership.     

Ultimate Controller Ownership and Firm Value in Taiwan

Using a panel of 242 Taiwanese listed firms during a ten-year period (1997-2006), this study tests whether there is an optimal ratio of ownership ultimate control that maximizes firm value. This work adopts Tobin's q as the proxy for firm value and finds that cash flow rights less than 27.8 percent and control rights between 32.34 percent and 34.03 percent are an optimal level of ownership ultimate control to maximize firm value. This distribution of financing sources propels the nonlinear relationship uncovered in this study and sheds light on legal aspects of Taiwan's system of ownership structure.     

The Choice Among Long-Term Financing Instruments for Public Utilities

This study examines the decision of regulated utilities to raise new financing via common stock, debt, or preferred stock offerings. We develop several logit models to test how a set of relevant variables affects the issuing choice. These variables include the level of insider ownership, regulatory climates, measures of aggregate market conditions, bankruptcy risk, deviations from the long-and short-term target ratios, asset composition, etc. In addition, this paper tests whether the cross-sectional level of debt ratio is related to some of these same factors. Our findings indicate that U.S. electric utilities are not influenced by market timing when making a choice among long-term financing instruments. However, our results do show that ownership structure variables, such as the number of directors and officers, seem to have a significant negative influence upon the choice of common stock, thus lending support to Friend and Lang's finding. In addition, capital structure seems to matter for utilities.     

The Method of Payment in Corporate Acquisitions,Investment Opportunities,and Management Ownership

This article examines the motives underlying the payment method in corporate acquisitions. The findings support the notion that the higher the acquirer's growth opportunities, the more likely the acquirer is to use stock to finance an acquisition. Acquirer managerial ownership is not related to the probability of stock financing over small and large ranges of ownership, but is negatively related over a middle range. In addition, the likelihood of stock financing increases with higher pre-acquisition market and acquiring firm stock returns. It decreases with an acquirer's higher cash availability, higher institutional shareholdings and blockholdings, and in tender offers.     

Son of Enron: Investors Weigh the Risks of Chinese Variable Interest Entities

Investors are heading back to China after ending a buyers' strike in response to numerous accounting scandals and corporate governance failures. There have been several successful IPOs in recent months, and the market is awaiting the listing of the internet giant The Alibaba Group. The Alibaba IPO has focused investor attention on the use of the variable interest entity (or VIE) structure by other overseas listed Chinese companies as well as Alibaba. The VIE structure allows outside investors some measure of influence or control over Chinese operations that is exercised through contracts instead of actual equity ownership. By using such contracts, companies are able to circumvent Chinese laws that severely restrict ownership in many industries, including the internet sector. The contracts attempt to replicate the benefits of direct ownership, but do so imperfectly. The biggest concern over the VIE structure is the enforceability of the contracts. China has a law that invalidates contracts that attempt to do what is illegal through legal means. One court case involving a VIE‐like structure led China's Supreme Court to rule that the contracts were unenforceable, and arbitrators reached the same decision. The biggest nightmare of investors in Chinese VIE structures is that the Chinese owner of the operating company could choose to abrogate the contracts and take ownership of the VIE. The highest profile example of this took place in 2011, when Alipay faced increased regulatory scrutiny and Jack Ma responded by extracting it from the Alibaba Group. The fix for China's VIE problem has to come from Chinese regulators, and reforms to foreign investment rules that have been proposed may make the VIE structure obsolete. But until then, investors have to weigh the unusual risk of investing in companies that they do not own.     

Biomarker of Quality? Venture‐backed Biotech IPOs and Insider Participation

Corporate financial managers of biotech firms need long‐term financing to reach key milestones, and that requires a long‐ term capital structure. They must balance a mix of investors with different objectives and different investment horizons that includes traditional venture capitalists and also hedge funds and mutual funds. This study helps practitioners understand the complex role of exit decisions, as venture capitalists seek better exit strategies and performance. IPOs are financing but not “exit” moves. In addition to certifying firm value, insider purchasing of shares in the IPO offering has two major consequences. First, venture capitalists reallocate large sums of capital from early‐stage to late‐stage deals that are expected to have lower risk (but also lower expected return) and shorter time to exit. Second, the speed at which VCs exit after the IPO depends on the firm ownership structure after the IPO and the stock liquidity. Going public with a significant participation by venture capitalists will probably increase the post‐IPO ownership and decrease the free float of the stock, implying a delay of the exit and the realization of the capital gains from the investments. Although this study has focused exclusively on the biotechnology industry, insider participation is not unique to it. Biotech's venture brethren in the software and technology industries also have insider participation in IPOs. During 2003–2015, approximately 41 venture‐backed firms outside of the biotechnology sector had insider participation.     

股权结构对财险公司风险承担行为影响的实证研究

本文从理论层面上剖析了公司股权结构对风险承担的影响及具体作用机理,然后基于2002～2018年我国77家财险公司的非平衡面板数据构建联立方程模型,利用三阶段最小二乘法(3SLS)进行参数估计.研究发现,股权结构对我国财险公司的风险承担行为存在显著影响.具体而言,股权集中度对承保风险存在显著正向影响,表现出“侵占效应”;...     

控制权与公司绩效：中国民营上市公司ST化的合理解释

从股权结构的角度对控制权指标进行选定和度量,以主营业务收益率、管理费用除以主营业务收益的比率作为公司控制权在经营绩效上的反映,建立了一个股权分散、控制权弱化与公司经营绩效的因果模型,并以中国ST民营企业数据进行实证。结果表明,公司的ST化与股权的制衡化以及第一大股东对董事会、总经理的直接控制能力下降(控制权弱化)存在显著正相关关系。因此,现代企业应该强化第一大股东的控制权,控制权转移应和股权转让相一致,才能有利于我国上市公司的长远发展。     

The dilemma of government intervention in a firm's financing: Evidence from China

This paper discovers the dilemma of government intervention in a firm's financing. With evidence from China, we document that government intervention causally promotes a firm's financial access but impedes the positive change of financial access (i.e., micro-financial development). Considering that our instrumental variable (IV) may be imperfectly exogenous, we apply the plausible exogeneity theory to verify that our IV estimates are robust to the relaxation of exclusion restriction. We further use mediation estimates to show that the corruption is the by-product of government intervention in financing and that the corruption due to government intervention constrains micro-financial development. Therefore, we discover that the corruption is the crux of the government-intervention dilemma.     

Cost of equity capital,control divergence,and institutions: the international evidence

This study investigates the governance role of a country’s legal and extra-legal institutions in explaining the variations in firms’ cost of equity capital induced by concentrated ownership structures from 21 countries. Using four implied cost of equity proxies, the results show that the large ownership-control divergence of the ultimate owner has a positive and significant impact on the firm’s cost of equity capital. The finding lends support to the entrenchment effect in that the concentrated ownership structure increases the firm’s external financing cost. Further analyses demonstrate that the higher equity cost induced by the ultimate ownership structure is significantly reduced by a country’s stronger legal and extra-legal institutions, highlighting the governance role played by a country’s institutions in reducing the firm’s external financing cost.     

Deposit insurance coverage,ownership, and banks' risk-taking in emerging markets

We ask how deposit insurance systems and ownership of banks affect the degree of market discipline on banks' risk-taking. Market discipline is determined by the extent of explicit deposit insurance, as well as by the credibility of non-insurance of groups of depositors and other creditors. Furthermore, market discipline depends on the ownership structure of banks and the responsiveness of bank managers to market incentives. An expected U-shaped relationship between explicit deposit insurance coverage and banks' risk-taking is influenced by country specific institutional factors, including bank ownership. We analyze specifically how government ownership, foreign ownership and shareholder rights affect the disciplinary effect of partial deposit insurance systems in a cross-section analysis of industrial and emerging market economies, as well as in emerging markets alone. The coverage that maximizes market discipline depends on country-specific characteristics of bank governance. This “risk-minimizing” deposit insurance coverage is compared to the actual coverage in a group of countries in emerging markets in Eastern Europe and Asia.     

Corporate Governance,Managers' Independence,Exporting, and Performance of Firms in Transition Economies

Using data on 157 large companies in Poland and Hungary, this paper employs Bayesian structural equation modeling to examine the relations among corporate governance, managers' independence from owners in terms of strategic decision making, exporting, and performance. Managers' independence is positively associated with firms' financial performance and exporting. In turn, the extent of managers' independence is negatively associated with ownership concentration, but positively associated with the percentage of foreign directors on the firm's board. We interpret these results as indicating that concentrated owners tend to constrain managerial autonomy at the cost of the firm's internationalization and performance, but board participation of foreign stakeholders enhances the firm's export orientation and performance by encouraging executives' decision-making autonomy.     

Determinants of Spanish Foreign Direct Investment in Morocco

Despite its cultural distance, Morocco is becoming an interesting target country for foreign direct investment (FDI) from Spanish firms. Several factors facilitate this process: Morocco's geographical proximity, strategic location, emerging market, political stability, and workforce, as well as the know-how the country needs to complete its economic development. Based on traditional theories about FDI and the resource-based view of the firm, this paper analyzes the influence that various firm-specific factors may have exerted on the ownership structure of investments in Morocco. Our results suggest that Spanish firms that have chosen full ownership investments without the support of a partner have more than one investment in Morocco, and accumulate more experience in using that investing strategy in other countries.     

The Effects of Foreign Trading of U.S. Treasuries

We examine the effects of foreign trading of U.S. Treasuries on the market's microstructure. Two intervals, the first characterized by heavy run‐ups in foreign ownership (1/1994–6/1997), and the second by multiple indicators of peaking of foreign ownership (7/1997–2000), are followed. Our findings reveal systematic effects associated with foreign trading. For instance, reductions in liquidity and trade sizes, and increases in informational asymmetry and dealer risk aversion, accompany falling demand for Treasury debt. Moreover, in this environment, foreign trading volume plays a larger explanatory role about the market's microstructure, than in an environment of rising demand. We also find dealer reactions to foreign transactions vary across the term‐structure.     

Ownership changes and access to external financing

This paper examines access to external financing in the privatization context and provides new evidence on the effects of financing constraints on performance and investment. Ownership reforms increase firms’ reliance on external financing. Empirically, performance and investment changes around ownership reforms are increasing in country-level measures of access to credit. The presence of a severe prior public financing constraint contributes to stronger investment growth after privatization. Privatized enterprises do not outperform publicly owned industries, all else given. Our analyses rely on new international sector- and firm-level data and correct for potential endogeneity of ownership changes.