The association between employee stock option disclosures and corporate governance: Evidence from an enhanced disclosure regime

This study examines the role of corporate governance in employee stock option (ESO) disclosures following the revision of AASB 1028 Employee Benefits in 2001. We find that, while firms do not fully comply with AASB 1028 ESO disclosures, they voluntarily provide other ESO disclosures. In relation to corporate governance measures that have a role in the financial reporting process, we find two corporate governance measures dominate our results—the quality of auditor and duality of the role of CEO and Chair of the Board of Directors. We show that, in general, external auditor quality has positive incremental association with both mandatory and voluntary ESO disclosures while the dual role of CEO and chairperson of the board is associated with lower levels of mandatory disclosure.     

The effect of corporate governance on firm’s credit ratings: further evidence using governance score in the United States

We investigate whether corporate governance affects firms’ credit ratings and whether improvement in corporate governance standards is associated with improvement in investment grade rating. We use the Gov‐score of Brown and Caylor (2006) , the Gomper’s G index and an entrenchment score of Bebchuk et al. (2009) to proxy for corporate governance. Using a sample of US firms, we find that firms characterized by stronger corporate governance have a significantly higher credit rating, and that this association is accentuated for smaller firms relative to larger firms. We find that an improvement in corporate governance is associated with improvement in bond rating.     

Liquidity and Volatility of Stocks Moved from the Main Market to the Alternative Investment Market (AIM)

Asia-Pacific Financial Markets - Companies moving from the Main market of London Stock Exchange to the AIM impair their information environment when entering the AIM; the information environment is...     

Risk reporting: A study of risk disclosures in the annual reports of UK companies

The concepts of risk and risk management have received considerable attention lately, but this has yet to be reflected in empirical research examining firms’ risk reporting practices. This study seeks to address this gap in the literature and explores risk disclosures within a sample of 79 UK company annual reports using content analysis. A significant association is found between the number of risk disclosures and company size. Similarly a significant association is found between the number of risk disclosures and level of environmental risk as measured by Innovest EcoValue`21™ Ratings. However, no association is found between the number of risk disclosures and five other measures of risk: gearing ratio, asset cover, quiscore, book to market value of equity and beta factor. The paper also discusses the nature of the risk disclosures made by the sample companies specifically examining their time orientation, whether they are monetarily quantified and if good or bad risk news is disclosed. It was uncommon to find monetary assessments of risk information, but companies did exhibit a willingness to disclose forward-looking risk information. Overall the dominance of statements of general risk management policy and a lack of coherence in the risk narratives implies that a risk information gap exists and consequently stakeholders are unable to adequately assess the risk profile of a company.     

中小板民营上市公司治理调研分析报告

从问卷调查分析结果来看,中小板民营上市公司治理在最近几年有了很大提升,特别是在董事会的独立性和内部制衡机制方面。但中小板民营上市公司治理中存在的最主要问题是一股独大的股权结构,它一方面缓解了股东集体行动的难题,但同时又加剧了股东之间的利益冲突。因此,建构对实际控制人的制约制度是未来提升民营上市公司治理绩效的核心工作。     

Diversification,corporate governance and firm value in small markets: evidence from New Zealand

We find that diversified firms in New Zealand are associated with a value discount of 19–42 per cent relative to single‐segment (undiversified) firms. Although several competing explanations have been offered in the literature, we find that the strength of corporate governance explains between 15–21 per cent of this discount. Specifically, board size, busyness of directors, CEO ownership and whether or not compensation of directors includes equity‐based components collectively explain a large part of the reported discount. Our results from companies trading in New Zealand complement recent findings in the US by not only confirming the existence of a diversification discount but also emphasizing the role of poor governance in destroying shareholder wealth by pursuing a value‐destroying corporate strategy. All our results hold after controlling for potential endogeneity in the decision to diversify and the choice of corporate governance structure by employing two‐way fixed‐effects and dynamic‐panel generalized method of moments regression techniques.     

The impact of board size on firm performance: evidence from the UK

We examine the impact of board size on firm performance for a large sample of 2746 UK listed firms over 1981–2002. The UK provides an interesting institutional setting, because UK boards play a weak monitoring role and therefore any negative effect of large board size is likely to reflect the malfunction of the board's advisory rather than monitoring role. We find that board size has a strong negative impact on profitability, Tobin's Q and share returns. This result is robust across econometric models that control for different types of endogeneity. We find no evidence that firm characteristics that determine board size in the UK lead to a more positive board size–firm performance relation. In contrast, we find that the negative relation is strongest for large firms, which tend to have larger boards. Overall, our evidence supports the argument that problems of poor communication and decision-making undermine the effectiveness of large boards.     

Improving corporate governance where the State is the controlling block holder: evidence from China

This paper examines changes in values and returns for Chinese firms around announcements of block-share transfers among government agencies, State-owned enterprises and private investors. We find that transfers to all three types of investors result in positive abnormal returns around transfer announcements, even when the transfers do not create a new controlling block holder and when transfers are between State entities. We also find that transfers from State entities to private entities result in larger increases in value and returns than transfers between State-controlled entities – consistent with the superior incentives and expertise of private investors. We conclude that corporate governance can be improved at State-controlled firms by improving incentives and expertise of controlling block holders.     

Role of corporate governance in moderating the risk-return paradox: Cross country evidence

This paper investigates the possible nexus between the 'risk-return paradox' and corporate-governance of firms in a cross-country cross-cultural setup. We use corporate governance as well as accounting risk and return data for a large dataset of 45,322 firm-years from 27 countries and show that the firm-level risk-return association may be a non-linear one, contingent on the firm performance. Firms which are below the industry median in terms of operating performance, exhibit an inverse relation in line with Bowman's (1980) ‘paradox' while those above-median exhibit a positive risk-return association. Further, we establish empirically that such risk-return association could be due to the rent-seeking actions of managers and that strong corporate-governance in a firm substantially moderates and reverses these effects. Our results are robust and hold strong through a number of robustness tests.     

The effect of corporate governance on CEO luck: Evidence from the Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS)

CEOs are “lucky” when they receive stock option grants on days when the stock price is the lowest in the month of the grant, implying opportunistic timing. Extending the work of Bebchuk et al. (2010), we explore the effect of overall corporate governance quality on CEO luck. Provided by the Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), our comprehensive governance metrics are much broader than those used in prior studies, encompassing more diverse aspects of corporate governance, such as audit, state laws, boards, ownership, and director education. We show that an improvement in governance quality by one standard deviation diminishes CEO luck by 14.77–21.06%. The governance standards recommended by ISS appear to be effective in deterring the opportunistic timing of option grants.     

Investment Policies and Excess Returns in Corporate Spin-offs: Evidence from the US Market

This article analyzes excess returns generated by corporate spin-offs with respect to changes in investment policies of the spun-off companies. Following the spin-off, the best performing spun-off companies with low growth opportunities exhibit a significant reduction in investment and the best performing high-growth spun-off companies tend to increase or maintain the previous level of investment. The results provide evidence of the existence of a direct monotonic relationship between the size of the change in the level of investment, Tobin’s Q, and excess returns based on the Fama and French (J. financ. Econ. 33: 3–56, 1993) model.     

The effects of environmental,social and governance disclosures and performance on firm value: A review of the literature in accounting and finance

This paper not only attempts to survey the burgeoning literature on environmental, social and governance disclosures and performance and their effects on firm value, but its focus also lies on highlighting stylised observations coming from the most recent work that has not yet become part of the ‘conventional wisdom’ in the field. In addition, it outlines some of the crucial knowledge gaps and interesting questions that have not, as of yet, been addressed and thus outlines a potential agenda for future research on socially responsible investing. Lastly, it introduces the papers published in this special issue of the British Accounting Review.     

The use of the Internet for corporate reporting in the Mercosur (Southern common market): The Argentina case

This study examines disclosure practices on the websites of companies listed on the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange. We perform content analysis to provide evidence on Internet reporting practices by 84 publicly traded firms. We also identify the characteristics of firms that communicate financial and non-financial information on the Internet. We find that companies in the financial and insurance, services and mining industries disclose more financial and non-financial information on their websites than companies in other industries. The average concentration of ownership is 68%, with 27% of the companies being controlled by foreign groups. Those companies with higher concentration disclose more financial and non financial information than companies with less concentration. Companies in the financial and insurance and service industries, utilize their websites for commercial purposes to facilitate access to customers to their accounts and also to sell services. This e-commerce usage of websites is less developed in other industries. About 71% of companies in the financial and insurance industry are included in the Merval25 index and are audited by Big 4. These companies are both larger in size and less profitable than companies in other industries. We find that profitability and leverage do not have significant effect on corporate Internet reporting practices and that growth has negative effect on corporate Internet reporting practices. We also find that companies in the mining sector provide significantly more disclosure about social responsibility indicating a desire to improve the public image of harming the environment. The results documented, herein, extend the literature on voluntary disclosure of financial and non-financial information using the Internet in emerging markets.     

Incentive Effects, Monitoring Mechanisms and the Market for Corporate Control: An Analysis of the Factors Affecting Public to Private Transactions in the UK

Abstract:   This paper investigates the factors that influence the decision to change the status of a publicly quoted company to that of a private company. We find that firms that go private are more likely to have higher CEO ownership and higher institutional ownership. In relation to their board structures, firms going private tend to have more duality but there is no statistical difference in the proportion of non‐executive directors. They do not show signs of having excess free cash flows but there is some evidence of lower growth opportunities. We do not find that firms going private experience a greater threat of hostile acquisition. The results are therefore consistent with incentive and monitoring explanations of going private. Calculation of the probability of going private shows that incentive effects are stronger than the monitoring effects.     

Real (adaptation) options and the valuation of equity: some empirical evidence

Data from 1,374 firms across four broad industrial groupings are used to assess the contribution that real (adaptation) options make to overall equity values. The analysis indicates that real (adaptation) options make a significant contribution to the equity value of firms with a market to book ratio (of equity) of around unity or less. As the market to book ratio grows beyond this level, however, the contribution made by real (adaptation) options decays quickly away and equity values are mainly comprised of the present value of the dividends that firms are expected to pay. This means that for around one in every five of the firms in our sample real (adaptation) options make a significant contribution to overall equity value. Thus, while linear equity valuation models would seem to be appropriate for the substantial majority of firms on which our sample is based, there is a sizeable minority of firms where real (adaptation) options have a significant impact on equity values. For this latter group of firms there will be a non-linear relationship between equity value and its determining variables. This has important implications for the regression procedures that are applied in this area of accounting research.     

Reprint of: Market liquidity in the financial crisis: The role of liquidity commonality and flight-to-quality

We examine the dynamics and the drivers of market liquidity during the financial crisis, using a unique volume-weighted spread measure. According to the literature we find that market liquidity is impaired when stock markets decline, implying a positive relation between market and liquidity risk. Moreover, this relationship is the stronger the deeper one digs into the order book. Even more interestingly, this paper sheds further light on so far puzzling features of market liquidity: liquidity commonality and flight-to-quality. We show that liquidity commonality varies over time, increases during market downturns, peaks at major crisis events and becomes weaker the deeper we look into the limit order book. Consistent with recent theoretical models that argue for a spiral effect between the financial sector’s funding liquidity and an asset’s market liquidity, we find that funding liquidity tightness induces an increase in liquidity commonality which then leads to market-wide liquidity dry-ups. Therefore our findings corroborate the view that market liquidity can be a driving force for financial contagion. Finally, we show that there is a positive relationship between credit risk and liquidity risk, i.e., there is a spread between liquidity costs of high and low credit quality stocks, and that in times of increased market uncertainty the impact of credit risk on liquidity risk intensifies. This corroborates the existence of a flight-to-quality or flight-to-liquidity phenomenon also on the stock markets.     

A test of the Ohlson (1995) model: Empirical evidence from Japan

This paper investigates the validity of the Ohlson [Contemp. Account. Res. 11 (1995) 661] information dynamics (Linear Information Model: LIM) and attempts to improve the LIM. The difficulty concerning the empirical tests of the LIM lies in identifying ν_t, which denotes information other than abnormal earnings. Recent papers, such as those of Myers [Account. Rev. 74 (1999) 1], Hand and Landsman [The pricing of dividends in equity valuation. Working paper, University of North Carolina, 1999], and Barth et al. [Accruals, cash flows, and equity values. Working paper (January) (July), Stanford University, 1999], all try to specify ν_t by using various accounting information. Instead of tackling this difficult task, this paper focuses on serial correlation in the error terms caused by omitting the necessary variable ν_t from the regression equation. The results indicate that adjustment for serial correlation leads to an improvement of the LIM.     

The change in the value relevance of accounting information after mergers and acquisitions: evidence from the adoption of SFAS 141(R)

This study examines how and why investors change the use of their information sources in valuation between book value and earnings after mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in both pre- and post-SFAS 141(R) periods. We find that investors generally put less weight on earnings but more weight on book value after M&A than before M&A, and that such a change is particularly strong after the adoption of SFAS 141(R). By looking at goodwill, other intangible assets and other balance sheet accounts that SFAS 141(R) amended, we further find that SFAS 141(R) improves the value relevance of book value components after M&A.     

The Role of Stock Size and Trading Intensity in the Magnitude of the "Interval Effect" in Beta Estimation: Empirical Evidence from the Polish Capital Market

In this paper, we present empirical evidence about the "interval effect" in estimation of beta parameters for stocks listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. We analyze models constructed for the returns calculated using intervals of different length—that is, 1, 5, 10, and 21 trading days (corresponding to, roughly, 1 day, 1 week, 2 weeks, and 1 month, respectively). In the cases in which heteroskedasticity was present, we estimated ARCH models. The results indicate that the estimates of betas for the same stock differ considerably when various return intervals are used. We further explore the source of differences in betas for every stock by investigating the relations between them and such factors as stock size and its trading intensity. The empirical results provide evidence that a statistically significant relationship exists between these two characteristics of stocks. This finding has important practical implications for beta estimation in practice.