The impact of government ownership on dividend policy in China

We investigate the impact of State ownership on Chinese corporate dividend policy. We find that Chinese firms' dividend payout rates respond fairly quickly to earnings changes, and the average actual payout ratio for Chinese firms falls between the payout ratios for emerging-market and developed firms. These results are consistent with the dividend policies of developing economies in general. We also find that dividend payouts among dividend-paying firms, and the likelihood that a firm will pay a dividend, are increasing in State ownership. Our findings are consistent with the State's need for cash flow as a partial motivation for continued State ownership of a significant portion of the corporate economy, and support the agency and tax clientele explanations for dividend policy.     

Government policy and ownership of equity securities

Since World War II, direct stock ownership by households across the globe has largely been replaced by indirect stock ownership by financial institutions. We argue that tax and retirement policies are among the factors behind these changes. We develop empirical measures of two tax incentives of holding stocks inside tax-deferred plans, tax-free investment income and the smoothing benefit. Using long time-series from eight countries, we show that the fraction of household ownership decreases with these measures of the tax benefits. This finding contributes to policy debates on effective taxation and to financial economics research on the long-term effects of taxation on corporate finance and asset prices.     

The influence of ownership structure,analyst following and institutional infrastructure on stock price informativeness: international evidence

Using firms from 20 non‐US countries, we investigate whether and how ownership structure, analyst following and country‐level institutions influence stock price informativeness (SPI). We find that stock price informativeness decreases with control‐ownership wedge (the detachment of voting rights from cash flows rights), and this SPI‐reducing effect of the wedge is attenuated for firms with high analyst following and in countries with strong country‐level institutions. We also find that stock price informativeness decreases with analyst following, but this SPI‐reducing effect of analyst following is attenuated in countries with strong country‐level institutions.     

Government ownership and the capital structure of firms: Analysis of an institutional context from China

Emerging economies provide interesting scenarios for examining how institutional context influences the financing behavior of firms. In this study, we examine the capital structure of Chinese listed firms following the Split-Share Structure Reform of 2005. This reform allowed a reduction of government ownership by making government shares tradable. We find that the impact of government ownership on leverage is dependent on whether the government is the largest shareholder in a firm and whether the government ownership is through a parent state-owned enterprise. In addition, we document that the largest non-government shareholder positively influences leverage. Overall, our results reveal that the largest controlling shareholder, either government or non-government, has a significant impact on the capital structure of Chinese firms.     

Are share price levels informative? Evidence from the ownership, pricing, turnover and performance of IPO firms

We ask whether a firm's choice of IPO price is informative in the sense that it relates systematically to the firm's other choices and characteristics. We find that both institutional ownership and underwriter reputation increases monotonically with the chosen IPO price level. We also find that the relationship between IPO price and underpricing is U-shaped. In contrast, post-IPO turnover displays an inverted U-shaped relation to IPO price. Moreover, firms choosing a higher (lower) stock price level experience lower (higher) mortality rates. Our results are robust to controls for market liquidity and firm size, and for partial adjustment of IPO prices based on pre-market information.     

股权分置改革中的内幕交易研究

本文采用我国全面股权分置改革的第一批上市公司为样本,利用事件研究方法,对事件日之前的累积超常收益CAR进行分析,结果表明：股改预期带来的股价提前反应是累积超常收益显著异于零的原因;没有足够的证据支持股改中存在内幕交易。     

Insider ownership, ownership concentration and investment performance: An international comparison

This article makes two important contributions to the literature on the incentive effects of insider ownership. First, it presents a clean method for separating the positive wealth effect of insider ownership from the negative entrenchment effect, which can be applied to samples of companies from the US and any other country. Second, it measures the effects of insider ownership using a measure of firm performance, namely a marginal q, which ensures that the causal relationship estimated runs from ownership to performance. The article applies this method to a large sample of publicly listed firms from the Anglo-Saxon and Civil law traditions and confirms that managerial entrenchment has an unambiguous negative effect on firm performance as measured by both Tobin's (average) q and our marginal q, and that the wealth effect of insider ownership is unambiguously positive for both measures. We also test for the effects of ownership concentration for other categories of owners and find that while institutional ownership improves the performance in the USA, financial institutions have a negative impact in other Anglo-Saxon countries and in Europe.     

国企混改、股权激励与企业绩效 ——基于格力电器的案例研究

本文从国企混改进入全方位深化的现实背景出发,对格力电器自上市以来混合所有制改革进行深入研究,分析了公司混改方案及对应的股权结构的变化.通过EVA分析得到混改导致公司财务业绩大幅上升,并从股权激励的视角分析了格力电器市盈率长期低于美的集团的现象.随着格力电器新一轮混改的完成,可以预见其将为相关各方创造更大价值.格力电器混...     

Ownership structure and its effect on dividend policy in the Mexican context

This work focused on analyzing whether the ownership structure has any effect on the dividend policy of companies in the Mexican market. The decision of dividend payment is one of the major elements in corporate policy, as this dividend policy influences the value of the company. Therefore, decisions such as adopting a company growth policy through the reinvestment of profits, or better yet allocating them to the payment of dividends, are going to be influenced by the type of ownership structure that dominates the company. The analysis was based on three types of ownership structures such as: families, institutions (mainly banks) and small blocks of shareholders. Our results show that the concentration of property in families negatively influences the payment of dividends, whereas the presence of institutional shareholders has an inverse effect on the payment of the same. This indicates that the presence of big shareholders foreign to the families has a different effect on the payment policy of dividends in the Mexican context. This work provides literature information about the context of emerging countries as is the case of Mexico, given that much of the existing investigations focus on European or North American contexts, where the markets are well regulated and property is broadly distributed.     

The effects of ownership structure,sub-optimal cash holdings and investment inefficiency on dividend policy: evidence from Indonesia

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - We investigate how a firm’s decision to hold excessive cash or to overinvest could influence its dividend payout policy in Indonesia....     

Target CEO age,ownership decisions,and takeover outcomes

This paper examines the effect of target CEO age, in association with target corporate governance mechanisms, on the ownership decisions and takeover outcomes in eight East and Southeast Asian countries. The results show that acquirers are more likely to select partial-control acquisitions of target firms managed by older CEOs, and that the impact of target CEO age on the partial-control acquisition propensity is much stronger in emerging markets relative to developed economies. The study further finds that target CEO age leads to a lower probability of obtaining desired equity ownership levels compared to unmatched ownership achievements, controlling for target corporate governance structures. The findings also run robustness checks regarding variations in the compulsory acquisition cut-off in the sample countries. Overall, this paper adds to the growing of mainstream corporate governance literature regarding the relevance of CEO personal characteristics in agency problems for corporate decisions.     

Private benefits, block transaction premiums and ownership structure

A simple model shows that both price premiums and standardized block premiums (SBPs) are biased measures of private benefits because they do not account for the transfer of control effectively taking place with the block. This depends not only on the fractional size of the block, but on the whole distribution of shareholdings. We propose an alternative methodology to measure private benefits which makes it possible to weight the size of traded blocks on the basis of their strategic power. We apply our method to a sample of Italian block transactions and show that the traditional method underestimates control rents. The sensitivity of private benefits to net worth, leverage, and nonvoting shares is also examined. Finally, we show how to forecast the price of out-of-sample blocks of shares on the basis of information on company capital and ownership structure.     

Joint size and ownership specialization in bank lending

During the period 1996–2003 consolidation reduces the size diversity of Spanish banks but diversity in ownership forms increases as savings banks and cooperatives gain market share. This paper examines the implications of these structural changes in Spanish credit markets in terms of banks’ specialization (large or small borrowers, relational or transactional lending) and consequent credit availability for small and opaque firms. We find that size-of-the-borrower/size-of-the-bank specialization follows a different pattern in savings banks than in commercial banks, suggesting lower organizational diseconomies of size in the former than in the latter, which helps to explain the increase in ownership diversity over time. We also find that savings banks and cooperatives specialize relatively more in relational lending than commercial banks so ownership diversity assures funding for small firms even if bank consolidation continues.     

Corporate ownership,corporate governance reform and timeliness of earnings: Malaysian evidence

This paper provides the first evidence showing that ownership concentration and the identity of the largest shareholder matter to the timeliness of corporate earnings, measured by a stock price-based timeliness metric and the reporting lag. Using panel data of 1276 Malaysian firms from 1996 to 2009, we find a non-linear relationship between concentrated ownership, measured by the largest shareholding in a firm, and the reporting lag but not the timeliness of price discovery. Although firms with government as the largest shareholder and political connections have a significantly shorter reporting lag, only the former are timelier in price discovery. Firms with family and foreigners as the largest shareholder however are less timely in price discovery. While the reporting lag is shorter in the period after the integration of the Malaysian Code of Corporate Governance (MCCG) into Bursa listing rules, its impact on the timeliness of price discovery is mostly immaterial.     

产权性质、融资约束与现金调整:兼论货币政策有效性

本文采用现金-现金流敏感度分析,通过2002年至2010年包括国际金融危机前后我国上市公司的样本,实证分析了金融危机外部冲击对不同产权性质企业现金持有及调整策略的影响,我们发现,在国际金融危机前,由于信贷歧视,民营上市公司的现金-现金流敏感度要高于国有上市公司;在国际金融危机的冲击下,由于银行信贷流向更不均衡以及政府财政刺激使得国有上市公司获得了更多的外部现金流,国有上市公司现金持有对公司内部产生的现金流敏感性进一步降低。通过动态调整模型的分析表明,在国际金融危机后,民营上市公司应对现金流动性变动的反应更强,现金持有向均值的调整积极性更高,因此,私人部门的现金策略行为在一定程度上缓解了对宏观经济的不利影响。     

公司特征、股权结构与股票流动性

股票流动性是金融市场微观结构的核心议题,其影响因素问题受到了人们的广泛关注。然而,以往的研究存在两个方面的重要缺陷:一是多数研究仅关注了股权结构对股票流动性的影响,而忽略了公司特征因素的作用;二是以往股权结构视角的研究由于存在研究设计上的问题,使得实证结论的可靠性不高。本文使用2003-2009年沪深两市仅发行了A股的上市公司为样本,采用高频交易数据构造买卖价差以衡量股票流动性,考察了公司特征、股权结构与股票流动性之间的关系,以及股权分置改革对这一关系的影响,得到了与以往研究不同的实证结论。针对这些结论,本文给出了符合我国制度背景的理论阐释。     

上市公司现金持有水平的影响因素：财务特征、股权结构及治理环境

本文研究了1999—2003年间中国上市公司现金持有水平的影响因素,包括财务特征、股权结构和治理环境。就全部样本来说,我们发现,(1)上市公司的现金持有水平与规模和财务杠杆负相关,与资产周转效率、现金流量、成长性／投资机会、股利支付需要和融资需要等正相关。(2)第一大股东持股比例与超额现金持有水平之间存在着显著的U型非线性关系,外部大股东持股比例与超额现金持有水平之间存在着显著的正相关关系;治理环境基本上与超额现金持有水平之间呈现出明显的负相关关系。同时,我们还根据控股股东性质对四个子样本进行了分析,发现在不同子样本的实证结果之间存在着一些比较明显的差异。     

外资持股、信息环境与现金持有价值

借鉴Faulkender and Wang(2006)和Dittar and Mahrt Smith(2007)提出的衡量现金持有价值的方法,采用固定效应回归模型,系统检验了2001-2006年我国A股、AB股和AH股上市企业的资金效率差异。实证检验发现,在资本市场分割和双重信息披露的作用下,有外资持股的AH股和AB股企业在统计和经济意义上表现出显著高于A股企业的资金效率。并且由于AH股企业面临着比AB股更为严厉的证券监管和法律保护实施,使得AH股的资金效率要较之AB股企业更高。外资持股企业的资金效率优势在样本区间的早期表现更加显著。研究表明,资本市场的投资者法律保护实施和信息披露环境完善对提高企业的资金效率发挥了重要的公司治理作用。     

A note on board characteristics,ownership structure and default risk in Taiwan

This study applies dynamic generalized method of moments estimation to examine the influences of ownership structure and board characteristics on default risk for a full samples and two subsamples (high‐tech and conventional) of publicly listed firms in Taiwan. Our findings reveal that certain characteristics of corporate governance have explanatory power for default probability, but the impact is not straightforward. In particular, the impact of internal and external governance structures on default risk is industry dependent. Accordingly, governance proposals that encourage higher ownership among directors and large block shareholdings in high‐tech firms or reduce managerial ownership in conventional companies can have a counterproductive effect on corporate governance and result in higher bankruptcy possibility.     

Nonnegotiable shares, controlling shareholders, and dividend payments in China

China has some unique institutional features. For example, the shares of listed firms are segmented into negotiable and nonnegotiable ones. The controlling shareholders, usually connected to the government, hold nonnegotiable shares. We examine how these institutional features affected cash dividend payments in China during the period 1994-2006. We find that dividend payments are positively associated with the proportion of nonnegotiable shares in a firm and the proportion of nonnegotiable shares held by the controlling shareholder; moreover, the 2001 China Securities Regulatory Commission stipulation requiring cash dividend payments does not benefit negotiable shareholders. However, we also find that dividend payments are downside flexible, and controlling shareholders cannot force firms to pay or to pay more dividends when firms' earnings decline significantly. The conventional factors, especially profitability or the capability to pay, still play an important role in determining the dividend policy. The propensity to pay and the payout ratio in China are not high compared to those of other countries.