Institutional ownership and credit spreads: An information asymmetry perspective

Recent literature has documented a link between institutional equity ownership (IO) and cost of debt capital, and interpreted it as a corporate governance effect. However, institutional equity investors may also affect cost of debt through their influence on information asymmetry condition of firms. To distinguish between the two effects, we break down institutional investors into different groups: transient institutional investors (TRA who are sensitive to information asymmetry but unlikely to participate in corporate governance, and the dedicated ones (DED) who act oppositely. Based on a most up-to-date and comprehensive bond data spanning the past 20 years, we find that credit spreads narrow (widen) with an increase in equity ownership by TRA (DED). The effects are most prominent among short-term bonds, bonds with lower ratings, higher leverage and higher volatilities. The results persist after controlling for potential endogeneity and other information asymmetry measures, and are unlikely due to an asset substitution effect. Overall, our findings provide strong support for the effect of information asymmetry on credit spread, and highlight the importance of distinguishing various types of institutional investors.     

Institutional investors and corporate environmental costs: The roles of investment horizon and investor origin

Using an international data set that quantifies corporate environmental costs, we analyze the influence of institutional investor ownership, particularly investment horizon and investor origin, on the monetized environmental impact generated by their investee firms. Institutional investor ownership is negatively related to corporate environmental costs. This effect is driven by long-term foreign institutional investors, especially investors from advanced economies. Corporate environmental costs are negatively correlated with firm valuation and positively correlated with the cost of equity. Since corporate environmental costs are not reflected in environmental, social and governance ratings, our results shed new light on the role of institutional investors in shaping corporate environmental impact.     

Investment Horizons and Information

We examine the relation between institutions' investment horizons on firms' financing and investment decisions. Firms with larger short‐term institutional ownership use less debt financing and invest more in corporate liquidity. In contrast, firms with larger long‐term institutional ownership use more internal funds, less external equity financing, and preserve investments in long‐term assets. These results are primarily driven by the variation in informational preferences of different institutions. We argue that short‐term (long‐term) institutions collect and use value‐neutral (value‐enhancing) information.     

Foreign institutional investment horizon and earnings management: Evidence from around the world

This paper investigates whether and how the investment horizon relates to foreign institutional monitoring in constraining the self-interested managerial use of earnings management for a sample of firms from 29 countries. We find that equity ownership by long-term foreign institutional investors, irrespective of the strength of institutional controls in their home countries, is associated with lesser earnings management. Accounting for the significance of information asymmetry in earnings management and the ability of long-term foreign institutional investors to mitigate the information disadvantage associated with cross-border equity investments, we find that the constraining effect is stronger in firms with weaker information environments. Finally, using multiple proxies for the country- and firm-level agency, we find that monitoring by long-term, rather than short-term, foreign institutional investors is significantly effective in limiting earnings management in environments of severe agency conflicts. Overall, our findings draw attention to the heterogeneity in the monitoring role played by foreign institutional investors in influencing the financial reporting quality.     

The Influence of Long-Term Performance Plans on Earnings Management and Firm Performance

Boards of directors often implement long-term performance plans (LTPP) to focus management's attention on enhancing long-term shareholder value instead of concentrating their efforts on short-term earnings. This study provides estimation results suggesting that firms that compensate managers with LTPP are associated with lower levels of managed earnings than firms that have only short-term bonus plans. In addition, we find evidence that suggests that firms with long-term performance plans have significantly higher annual returns than firms that have only short-term bonus plans. We also find that firms with long-term performance plans are typically larger firms with smaller managerial ownership and larger institutional ownership than firms without long-term performance plans.     

Stock Splits: An Institutional Investor Preference

This study examines the relationship between the level of institutional ownership and the likelihood that firms will enact a stock split. There is evidence of a positive relationship between institutional ownership and subsequent split behavior. A firm size effect emerges from the finding that larger firms have higher percentages of institutional owners. This implies that institutional investors either encourage stock split behavior or invest in firms that exhibit indicators of eminent stock splits. Institutions purchasing shares before the split are likely to obtain short-term and long-term earmings increases.     

Institutional Investors and Firm Efficiency of Real Estate Investment Trusts

This study investigates the effect of institutional ownership on improving firm efficiency of equity Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), using a stochastic frontier approach. Firm inefficiency is estimated by comparing a benchmark Tobin??s Q of a hypothetical value-maximizing firm to the firm??s actual Q. We find that the average inefficiency of equity REITs is around 45.5%, and that institutional ownership can improve the firm??s corporate governance, and hence reduce firm inefficiency. Moreover, we highlight the importance of heterogeneity in institutional investors??certain types of institutional investors such as long-term, active, and top-five institutional investors, and investment advisors are more effective institutional investors in reducing firm inefficiency; whereas hedge funds and pension funds seem to aggravate the problem. In sub-sample analysis, we find that these effective institutional investors can reduce inefficiency more effectively for distressed REITs, and for REITs with high information asymmetry, and with longer term lease contracts. Lastly, we find that the negative impact of institutional ownership (except for long-term institutional investors) on firm inefficiency reduces over time, possibly due to strengthened corporate governance and regulatory environment in the REIT industry.     

Does the investment horizon of institutional investors matter for stock liquidity?

This paper examines the role of the investment horizon of institutional investors on stock liquidity of firms. We show that an increase in long-term institutional ownership is negatively associated with firm liquidity, while an increase in short-term ownership is positively related to a firm's stock liquidity. We identify the ownership-liquidity relationship by examining two major channels: the trading activity channel and the informational friction channel. Long-term investors reduce stock liquidity through low frequency trading and access to value-enhancing and private information, which induces adverse selection bias. In contrast, short-term investors improve liquidity through trading activity and competition with other investors, which lowers transaction costs. Our findings further suggest that the effects of an increase in long-term (short-term) institutional investors on liquidity weaken (strengthen) when a firm has more publicly available information. Finally, we show that the positive impact of an increase in long-term ownership on valuation is more pronounced for firms with higher liquidity and the valuation effect is persistent.     

Long-term reversals in the corporate bond market

Long-term reversals in corporate bonds are economically and statistically significant in a comprehensive sample spanning the period 1977 to 2017. Such reversals are stronger for bonds with high credit risk and more binding regulatory, capital, and funding liquidity constraints. Bond long-term reversal is not a manifestation of the equity counterpart and is mainly driven by long-term losers. A long-term reversal factor carries a sizable premium and is not explained by long-established equity and bond market factors. Thus, past returns capture investors’ ex-ante risk assessment and the degree of institutional constraints they face, so losing bonds command higher expected returns.     

Are there monitoring benefits to institutional ownership? Evidence from seasoned equity offerings

We provide new evidence on the monitoring benefits from institutional ownership by analyzing the impact of institutional ownership on stock price and operating performance following seasoned equity offerings, a setting where the effects of monitoring are likely to be especially important. We find that announcement returns are positively and significantly related to total and active institutional ownership levels and concentration. Post-issue stock returns are positively and significantly related to the contemporaneous post-issue changes in total and active institutional ownership and the concentration of their shareholdings. Operating performance improvements are also related to institutional monitoring in the one, two, and three years following the equity issue. Our results continue to hold even after accounting for the possibility that institutional investors have an informational advantage that enables them to identify and invest in subsequently better performing firms. We also empirically eliminate the possibility that our findings are driven by institutions buying past winners and selling past losers as a way to window-dress their portfolio holdings.     

Institutional investment horizons,corporate governance,and credit ratings: International evidence

Using a comprehensive set of firms from 57 countries over the 2000–2016 period, we examine the relation between institutional investor horizons and firm-level credit ratings. Controlling for firm- and country-specific factors, as well as for firm fixed effects, we find that larger long-term (short-term) institutional ownership is associated with higher (lower) credit ratings. This finding is robust to sample composition, alternative estimation methods, and endogeneity concerns. Long-term institutional ownership affects ratings more during times of higher expropriation risk, for firms with weaker internal corporate governance, and for those in countries with lower-quality institutional environments. Additional analysis shows that long-term investors facilitate access to debt markets for firms facing severe agency problems. These findings suggest that, unlike their short-term counterparts, long-term investors improve a firm's credit risk profile through effective monitoring.     

On the association between institutional ownership and aggressive corporate earnings management in Australia

This study examines the association between institutional ownership and Australian firms' aggressive earnings management strategies. In contrast to similar studies, this study does not assume that the two views on how institutional ownership associates with firms' earnings management behaviour are mutually exclusive. The association between institutional ownership and firms' income increasing discretionary accruals is expected to vary as the level of institutional ownership increases. The results support the predicted non-linear association between institutional ownership and income increasing discretionary accruals. In particular, a positive association is found at the lower institutional ownership levels, consistent with the view that transient (short-term oriented) institutional investors create incentives for managers to manage earnings upwards. On the other hand, a negative association is found at the higher institutional ownership levels, consistent with the view that long-term oriented institutional investors' monitoring limits managerial accruals discretion. These findings suggest that institutional investors can act as a complementary corporate governance mechanism in mitigating myopic aggressive earnings management by corporations when they have a sufficiently high ownership level.     

Club deals in leveraged buyouts

We analyze the pricing and characteristics of club deal leveraged buyouts (LBOs)—those in which two or more private equity partnerships jointly conduct an LBO. Using a comprehensive sample of completed LBOs of U.S. publicly traded targets conducted by prominent private equity firms, we find that target shareholders receive approximately 10% less of pre-bid firm equity value, or roughly 40% lower premiums, in club deals compared to sole-sponsored LBOs. This result is concentrated before 2006 and in target firms with low institutional ownership. These results are robust to controls for target and deal characteristics, including size, Q, measures of risk, and time and industry fixed effects. We find little support for benign motivations for club deals based on capital constraints, diversification motives, or the ability of clubs to obtain favorable debt amounts or prices, but it is possible that the lower pricing of club deals is an inadvertent byproduct of an unobserved benign motivation for club formation.     

Empirical evidence on the impact of external monitoring on book–tax differences

This study investigates whether institutional ownership levels are associated with levels of and time-series variability in book–tax differences (BTDs). Firm and year fixed-effects regression results suggest that institutional ownership is negatively associated with total, permanent, and temporary BTDs. This effect is driven primarily by permanent BTDs in the pre-SOX era but is consistently present for both permanent and temporary BTDs post-SOX. Further, this negative association is present regardless of firms' classification as “tax planners” and/or “earnings managers.” Finally, the results provide some evidence that stronger monitoring by the board and audit committee (i.e., a smaller and more independent board and a larger audit committee) is associated with lower permanent BTDs but is not consistently related with total or temporary BTDs. Overall, these findings are consistent with higher levels of institutional ownership equating to more effective monitoring of management, resulting in lower BTDs (in terms of both levels and time-series variability).     

控制权冲突、资本配置决策与投资组合选择

本文以长期股权投资和固定资产的投资组合选择为研究对象,从控制权私利的视角探讨了大股东自利性动机对资本配置决策的作用机理,并进行了相应的数值模拟。研究发现：（1）固定资产投资规模与长期股权投资高状态收益存在负相关关系,而长期股权投资规模则与其高状态收益概率正相关;（2）大股东自利性动机驱使下的资本配置决策偏离了分散持股时的资本配置水平,偏离程度会随着现金流权与控制权分离度的增加而展现出非线性变化态势。上述研究结论为当前有关加强上市公司大股东财务决策监管的政策导向提供了重要的经验启示。     

Banks,firms and the relative pricing of tax-exempt and taxable bonds

The traditional analysis of the relative pricing of tax-exempt and taxable debt is a habitat theory of the term structure of interest rates. In the traditional analysis the preferences of investors for particular maturities of debt lead to unique pricing relations at every point on the yield curve which are indicative of investor marginal tax brackets. Recent work by Fama (1977) suggests that banks are potential arbitrageurs across tax-exempt and taxable bond markets which force a particular equilibrium on the pricing of short-term bonds. Miller (1977) suggests that the choice of debt or equity financing by firms in the aggregate forces a similar equilibrium on the pricing of all tax-exempt and taxable bonds. This paper exploits the institution of Regulation Q and its effects on the banking system to bring evidence to bear on the predictions of these three models.     

Structural models of corporate bond pricing with maximum likelihood estimation

This paper empirically examines the proxy, volatility-restriction (VR) and maximum likelihood (ML) approaches to implementing structural corporate bond pricing models, and documents that ML estimation is the best among the three implementation methods. Empirical studies using either the proxy approach or the VR method conclude that barrier-independent models significantly underestimate corporate bond yields. Although barrier-dependent models tend to overestimate the yield on average, they generate a sizable degree of underestimation. The present paper shows that the proxy approach is an upwardly biased estimator of the corporate assets and makes the empirical framework work systematically against structural models of corporate bond pricing. The VR approach may generate inconsistent corporate bond prices or may fail to give a positive corporate bond price for some structural models. When the Merton, LS, BD and LT models are implemented with ML estimation, we find substantial improvement in their performances. Our empirical analysis shows that the LT model is very accurate for predicting short-term bond yields, whereas the LS and BD models are good predictors for medium-term and long-term bonds. The Merton model however significantly overestimates short-term bond yields and underestimates long-term bond yields. Unlike empirical studies in the past, the Merton model implemented with ML estimation does not consistently underestimate corporate bond yields.     

Institutional ownership composition and accounting conservatism

This study empirically investigates the association between institutional ownership composition and accounting conservatism. Transient (dedicated) institutional investors, holding diversified (concentrated) portfolios with high (low) portfolio turnover, focus on portfolio firms’ short-term (long-term) perspectives and trade heavily (generally do not trade) on current earnings news. Thus, I predict that as transient (dedicated) institutional ownership increases, firms will exhibit a lower (higher) degree of accounting conservatism. Consistent with my predictions, in the context of asymmetric timeliness of earnings, I document that as the level of transient (dedicated) institutional ownership increases, earnings become less (more) asymmetrically timely in recognizing bad news.     

Institutional Shareholder Investment Horizons and Seasoned Equity Offerings

Firms with more short‐term institutional shareholders experience significantly more negative abnormal returns at the announcement of seasoned equity offerings. This effect is strong for primary offerings (only firms receive proceeds), but is not present for secondary offerings (firms do not receive any proceeds). Furthermore, a shorter institutional shareholder investment horizon predicts poorer postissue abnormal operating performance and the negative effect of a shorter shareholder horizon is mitigated by higher managerial ownership. My results are consistent with the argument that long‐term shareholders more carefully monitor managerial activities and prevent misuse of the cash flow provided by equity issues.