The Appraisal of Ordinary Shares by Investment Analysts in the UK and Germany

This paper reports the findings of a two-country survey of the approaches to and information used by investment analysts. It examines the changes in the ordinary share appraisal approaches adopted by UK analysts over the past decade, and investigates the differences between British and German analysts in share appraisal methods, goals and information sources. The principal findings are that (i) deregulation and the introduction of new technology to the UK market has had little impact on the equity appraisal approach employed by analysts other than the greater reliance placed on personal contact with companies, and (ii) UK analysts are no more ‘short-termist’ than their German counterparts in assessing ordinary shares.     

The Use and Representational Faithfulness of Graphs in Annual Reports: Australian Evidence

Effective communication of information using graphs depends on the graphs being constructed so that they faithfully represent the underlying data. If certain principles of graphic construction are violated, graphs will be distorted and may mislead users of financial statements. The paper develops and tests hypotheses concerning the relationship between the use and construction of graphs in the annual reports of companies and the performance of those companies.     

因机制宜披难疾进--2003年国有商业银行年报解读

2004年5月底到6月,中行、工行、建行相继公布了其2003年年报,虽然说有些姗姗来迟,虽然说依旧受到质疑,但毕竟是信息披露向规范化和国际化迈出的重要一步。姑且不去评论在这一过程中的是是非非,我们关心的是,就年报本身而言,可以获得哪些方面的信息。     

The Use and Abuse of Graphs in Annual Reports: Theoretical Framework and Empirical Study

This study investigates the use and abuse of graphs in external financial reporting. From an analysis of the annual reports of 240 large UK companies for the year ended 1989 we document the nature and extent of graph usage. The average number of graphs per annual report is 5.9, with 65% of companies graphing at least one key financial variable. Drawing on modern theories of graphical perception we identify selectivity in the use of graphs, and non-compliance with the principles of graph construction, as potential distortions in the communication process. We find that companies with ‘good’ performance are significantly more likely to use financial graphs. Material measurement distortions occur in 30% of these graphs, with the underlying numerical data being exaggerated by an average of 10.7%. We conclude that auditors' and directors' responsibilities in this area should be made more explicit.     

Properties of Market Expectations of Accounting Earnings by Financial Analysts: UK versus US

This paper compares patterns and properties of financial analysts' forecasts (FAFs) of earnings between the UK and the US. Using 299 UK and 400 US firms from the same data source—Institutional Brokers Estimate System tapes—the accuracy of forecasts is examined and the sources of errors analysed. The results reveal that FAFs errors in the UK are much smaller than those in the US, and that this disparity persists even after controlling for firm size and industry effects. Further, FAFs of US firms demonstrate consistent overestimation of earnings over the sample period 1988–1990, while UK firms show overestimation in only one of three years. A model developed to test the determinants of forecast error reveals that forecasters of UK firms are influenced in a somewhat different fashion from those of US firms. While dispersion, predisclosure information (market capitalisation or number of analysts), and industry are common determinants of forecast error for both countries, the percentage of forecasts revised is a major determinant only for UK firms.     

媒体报道与投资效率

本文基于国内上市公司近六年主流媒体报道的经验数据,对媒体报道与企业投资之间的关系进行了探究,研究发现:媒体报道尤其是正面报道数量越多,投资行为越被关注,越会导致管理层过度自信,或由于投资者情绪高涨,会增强企业的投资程度,引发过度投资或者缓解投资不足;而负面报道对企业投资程度的影响并不显著。本研究可为投资者提供决策参考。     

Do Analysts and Auditors Use Information in Accruals?

Existing research indicates that firms with high accruals are more likely to experience future earnings problems, but that investors' expectations, as reflected in stock prices, do not appear to anticipate these problems. In this paper, we directly examine the published opinions of two types of professional investor intermediaries to see if they provide investors with information concerning the future earnings problems experienced by firms with high accruals. First, we examine the earnings forecasts of sell-side analysts. We show that analysts' earnings forecasts do not incorporate the predictable future earnings declines associated with high accruals. Second, we examine the behavior of independent auditors. We find no evidence that auditors signal the future earnings problems associated with high accruals through either their audit opinions or through auditor changes. Overall, our evidence indicates that analysts and auditors do not alert investors to the future earnings problems associated with high accruals, thus corroborating previous findings that investors do not appear to anticipate these problems.     

2011年上市银行年报分析

编者按:截至2011年4月,A股全部16家上市银行均公布了2011年度报告。2011年,央行推行稳健的货币政策,3次加息、6次提高存款准备金率,一时间流动性极为紧张,但这很大程度上提升了银行的议价能力,直接增加了银行的利息收入,净利润继续保持高速增长。与此同时,上市银行的非利息收入也得以持续增长,对营业收入的贡献持续提高。此外,上市银行的资本充足率得到改善,资产结构与资产质量也保持在很高的水准。总体来说,各家银行的年报精彩纷呈,体现了各银行良好的业绩和经营特色,反映了各银行的发展历程及银行业的总体走势。希望各上市银行能够继续保持这种良好的发展势头,呈现一个更加精彩的2012。     

中国证券市场年报补丁公司特征研究

在上市公司午报披露之后，屡屡可见公司对年报的各类补充公告与更正公告（即年报补丁），年报朴丁不仅受到媒体的强烈抨击，也为监管部门所关注。本文选取发布2001～2003年年报补丁的公司作为研究样本，并分年度、行业、公司规模选取配对样本，考察补丁公司的经济特征，研究表明，相对配对样本而言，补丁公司的业绩较差，公目的总资产增长较快，较少设置审计委员会，且审计质量较差。     

Financial Opacity and Firm Performance: The Readability of REIT Annual Reports

We examine the capital market pricing implications of firm disclosure opacity as measured by the linguistic readability of REIT annual reports. The SEC has expressed concern that firms selectively manage the transparency of disclosures in order to hide adverse information. After controlling for other non-experimental factors that influence the readability of REIT financial statements, we find (1) financial opacity is negatively related to reported firm performance, and (2) the residual opacity that remains after controlling for other determinants of annual report readability has incremental explanatory power for returns beyond the Fama and French (1992, 1993) risk factors. The opacity risk-return premium persists after controlling for a (heretofore undocumented) stark monotonic decrease in annual report readability following the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.     

The Informational Role of Bond Analysts

This study uses a large sample of sell-side bond analysts' reports to examine the properties of recommendations provided by bond analysts and the impact of these recommendations on bond securities. First, we document that the distribution of bond analysts' buy, hold, and sell recommendations is skewed positively, but less so than the distribution of equity analysts' recommendations. The positive skewness in bond analysts' recommendations is greater for low than for high credit quality bonds. Second, we find that bond analysts' reports generate bond trading and return reactions that are both economically significant and greater for low credit quality bonds. The bond market reaction is greater for bond analysts' reports than for equity analysts' reports. Finally, while both bond and equity analysts lead rating agency announcements, we find no evidence of a difference in timeliness between bond and equity analysts' reports. Overall, our results are consistent with bond analysts issuing more negative reports than equity analysts and providing more information about low credit quality bonds as a result of the asymmetric demand for negative information by bond investors.     

Excess Volatility and UK Investment Trusts

Abstract:   The issue of whether or not asset prices are more volatile than the underlying fundamentals is an empirical question with implications for market efficiency. Recent research suggests that the volatility of closed end fund returns in the USA is significantly higher than the returns on assets held by the funds. This has been attributed to noise trading as closed‐end fund shares are predominantly held by individual investors. This study demonstrates that UK investment trust returns exhibit similar excess volatility in spite of the prevalence of institutional investors. However, big investment trusts in terms of market capitalisation show greater excess volatility than small trusts. Although most of the excess volatility appears to be idiosyncratic, investor sentiment index is the most important variable associated with residual returns.     

The Investment Incentive Effects of Land Use Regulations

This paper provides an overview and synthesis of the results from recent studies of how different types of land use regulations affect land development incentives. The presentation is nontechnical and focuses on uncovering general principles for the dynamic effects of such policies. It explains why the risk of regulation leads to faster development of unregulated land and how the effect on structural densities reflects the underlying pattern of growth in the demand for land by competing uses. It also discusses how the general pattern of timing and density responses for regulated property reflect the same growth patterns in demand.     

Investment style positioning of UK unit trusts

We investigate the investment style positioning of UK equity unit trusts (mutual funds) over the 24-year period from 1987 to 2010 and assess if fund manager claims to follow a particular style strategy are evidenced in practice. Generally, UK unit trusts do not, in fact, consistently track declared styles but subject their funds to style switching or rotation. Nor do funds switch to become simple index trackers, as has widely been reported, but exhibit a mix of behaviour that we refer to as ‘market-momentum styling’. Our contribution is to offer a coherent, end-to-end picture of the evolution of investment styles over an economic cycle. In so doing we evidence that fund style positioning is subject to rotation and becomes subordinated to past portfolio performance or style momentum. Even this result is conditional as we go on to demonstrate that style investment is very likely to be driven by broader economic conditions, thereby creating market-momentum styling by default. This is arguably not a style at all and calls into question the intent behind fund ‘strategies’.     

Consistency of UK Pension Fund Investment Performance

Transition matrix techniques are used to relate the past and present performance of pension fund portfolios. In particular, funds are ranked to study the tendency of portfolios to remain in the same quartile of the ranking as they were in the previous period. For raw returns, funds in both of the top quartiles are found to be more likely to remain in the same quartile than would be expected by chance. This result can be taken as limited evidence for the consistency of performance. Similar systemic effects are observed on a risk-adjusted basis. There appears to be clear evidence that some fund managers can offer a degree of consistent good performance.     

Disclosure in the Corporate Annual Reports of Swedish Companies

Sweden is of interest because of the rapid growth in the Stockholm stock exchange and because of the country's disproportionate number of multinational enterprises. This paper reports on the extent of disclosure in the corporate annual reports of Swedish companies. An assessment is made as to whether there is a significant association between a number of independent variables and the extent of disclosure.     

从上市银行年报看银行发展

2012年的上市银行年报已经陆续出炉。从这些年报中,我们高兴地看到银行业又取得了不错的业绩。需要说明的是,在本文写作时,华夏银行、宁波银行、南京银行和北京银行的年报还未公布,故本文的分析没有包括这些银行。本文拟从贷款、存款、利息收入、中间业务收入以及国际业务发展等几个方面进行解读。