How do the content,format, and tone of Twitter-based corporate disclosure vary depending on earnings performance?

Using 86,891 tweets, from the official corporate Twitter accounts of 715 unique firms, this study examines whether and how managers strategically attract and distract investors’ attention from corporate news through Twitter. We find that firms with good earnings news use Twitter to post more earnings-related information directly, whereas firms with bad earnings news post more non-earnings-related information on Twitter. We further find that depending on earnings performance firms strategically choose the format of tweets (qualitative or quantitative) and the tone of earnings tweets (positive or negative) to attract investors’ attention to good news or distract investors’ attention from bad news. Our results are robust to difference-in-differences (DID), alternative sample periods, and different variable specifications. Our findings provide empirical evidence for investors and regulators regarding current practices in corporate information on Twitter.     

Corporate Governance and Information Efficiency in Security Markets

This paper investigates a neglected topic in corporate governance research; namely, do governance characteristics affect the market reaction to news? The topic is important given the emphasis by governance regulations and codes of best practice on the need for greater transparency of corporate activities. For the first time in the corporate governance literature, we show that corporate governance characteristics (particularly the presence of founding family directors and gender diverse boards) affect the market reaction to company specific news. The results of the paper point to the analysis of the impact of governance characteristics on the market reaction to news being a new and complementary research agenda within corporate governance.     

Overconfidence and Investor Size

Recent research documents that institutional or large investors act as antagonists to other investors by showing opposite trading behaviour following the disclosure of new information. Using an extremely comprehensive official transactions data set from Finland, we set out to explore the interrelation between investor size and behaviour. More specifically, we test whether investor size is positively (negatively) correlated with investor reaction following positive (negative) news. We document robust evidence of that investor size affects investor behaviour under new information, as larger investors on average react more positively (negatively) to good (bad) news than smaller investors. We furthermore find that the performance of smaller, or more overconfident, investors is in general hurt by their behaviour.     

Insider trading,future earnings,and post-earnings announcement drift

This paper examines the association between insider trading prior to quarterly earnings announcements and the magnitude of the post-earnings announcement drift (PEAD). We conjecture and find that insider trades reflect insiders’ private information about the persistence of earnings news. Thus, insider trades can help investors better understand and incorporate the time-series properties of quarterly earnings into stock prices in a timely and unbiased manner, thereby mitigating PEAD. As predicted, PEAD is significantly lower when earnings announcements are preceded by insider trading. The reduction in PEAD is driven by contradictory insider trades (i.e., net buys before large negative earnings news or net sells before large positive earnings news) and is more pronounced in the presence of more sophisticated market participants. Consistent with investors extracting and trading on insiders’ private information, pre-announcement insider trading is associated with smaller market reactions to future earnings news in each of the four subsequent quarters. Overall, our findings indicate insider trading contributes to stock price efficiency by conveying insiders’ private information about future earnings and especially the persistence of earnings news.     

Insider Trading and Corporate Information Transparency

Our study examines the relation between insider trading and corporate information transparency. We find a negative relation between firms’ information transparency and the economic significance of insider trading, including the amount of insider purchase and sale and the profitability of insider transactions. We also find a negative relation between information transparency and stock price reaction to news of insider trading, which suggests that increases in information transparency preempt insiders’ private information. Our study provides evidence consistent with firms’ transparency-enhancing activities decreasing information asymmetry between insiders and investors by revealing insiders’ private information to investors in a timely manner.     

Corporate Governance,Companies’ Disclosure Practices and Market Transparency: A Cross Country Study

We examine the link between corporate governance, companies’ disclosure practices and their equity market transparency in a study of more than 5,000 listed companies in 23 countries covering the period 1 January 2003 to 31 December 2008. Our results confirm the belief that better‐governed firms make more frequent disclosures to the market. We also find greater disclosure in common law relative to code law countries. However firms with better governance in both code and common law countries make more frequent disclosures. We measure market transparency by the timeliness of prices. In contrast to single country studies, results show, for the 23 countries collectively, better corporate governance is associated with less timely share prices. This would suggest that a firm substitutes better corporate governance for transparency. We are thus led to the conclusion that even if information is disclosed more frequently by better‐governed firms, it does not necessarily follow that information is reflected in share prices on a timelier basis.     

The Governance Effect of the Media's News Dissemination Role: Evidence from Insider Trading

We investigate whether the media plays a role in corporate governance by disseminating news. Using a comprehensive data set of corporate and insider news coverage for the 2001–2012 period, we show that the media reduces insiders’ future trading profits by disseminating news on prior insiders’ trades available from regulatory filings. We find support for three economic mechanisms underlying the disciplining effect of news dissemination: the reduction of information asymmetry, concerns regarding litigation risk, and the impact on insiders’ personal wealth and reputation. Our findings provide new insights into the real effect of news dissemination.     

Does governance travel around the world? Evidence from institutional investors

We examine whether institutional investors affect corporate governance by analyzing portfolio holdings of institutions in companies from 23 countries during the period 2003–2008. We find that firm-level governance is positively associated with international institutional investment. Changes in institutional ownership over time positively affect subsequent changes in firm-level governance, but the opposite is not true. Foreign institutions and institutions from countries with strong shareholder protection play a role in promoting governance improvements outside of the U.S. Institutional investors affect not only which corporate governance mechanisms are in place, but also outcomes. Firms with higher institutional ownership are more likely to terminate poorly performing Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and exhibit improvements in valuation over time. Our results suggest that international portfolio investment by institutional investors promotes good corporate governance practices around the world.     

Your Governance or Mine?

In response to criticism directed at the resource sector's corporate governance, this paper examines the corporate governance and underlying firm characteristics of resource development stage entities (DSEs) relative to a size‐matched sample of non‐resource firms. We find that resource DSEs have different governance characteristics in the measures of board independence, chair/CEO duality and CEO cash bonuses. Furthermore, there are differences in the information environment measures of analyst following, debt levels, stock market return and stock turnover. Considering we document substantial differences in underlying firm characteristics, corporate governance differences are likely appropriate to the mining industry and should not be uniformly labelled as ‘bad’. Our results suggest that media rankings based on corporate governance scores may not accurately portray the resource sector. Overall, our results are of interest to Australian investors and regulators and contribute to a broader understanding of contextually contingent corporate governance.     

Which Investors Fear Expropriation? Evidence from Investors' Portfolio Choices

Using a data set that provides unprecedented detail on investors' stockholdings, we analyze whether investors take the quality of corporate governance into account when selecting stocks. We find that all categories of investors (domestic and foreign, institutional and small individual) who generally enjoy only security benefits are reluctant to invest in companies with weak corporate governance. In contrast, individuals connected with company insiders are more likely to invest in weak corporate governance companies. These findings suggest that it is important to distinguish between investors who enjoy private benefits or access private information, and investors who enjoy only security benefits.     

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.     

Stock market reactions to adverse ESG disclosure via media channels

This study examines the value relevance of corporate reputation risks (CRR) from adverse media coverage of environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues on stock performance at the firm level. Empirical results advance signalling theory and resource-based view by providing evidence that corporate reputation is considered a valuable intangible asset by investors and adverse ESG disclosure via media channels have a significant and negative impact on firm valuation. The research is extended using various factors and indicates that heightened CRR have a substantially negative corollary effect on stock price of smaller and less liquid firms that are typically not S&P500 constituents. Further analysis using industry classifications reveals that stock performance of companies in the ‘sin’ triumvirate (i.e., alcohol, tobacco, and gaming) is not significantly affected by negative ESG media coverage. Instead, firms in candy & soda, steel works, banking, and insurance industries are the most susceptible to investors' repercussion from undesirable media spotlight. These findings provide new insights and indicate that beyond the type and delivery method of ESG disclosures, firm characteristics, corporate reputation status and industry explain differences in investors' reaction to ‘bad’ news.     

Attention! Distracted institutional investors and stock price crash

Using the extreme returns of firms in unrelated industries of institutional shareholders' portfolios as exogenous variations in institutional investor distraction (Kempf et al. 2017), we find a positive and significant relation between institutional shareholder distraction and stock price crash risk. The effect is associated with weakened monitoring, and it becomes stronger when alternative corporate governance is weaker and when managers' incentives to hoard bad information are stronger. Managers reduce firms' accounting conservatism when institutional investors become distracted, which is evidence of an increased motivation to hoard bad news. Overall, our findings shed additional light on the important monitoring role of institutional investors in corporate governance.     

The Corporate Governance Premium,Returns, and Mutual Funds

Mutual funds with a preference for strong corporate governance (CG) have performance similar to mutual funds with a preference for weak CG. We find a direct relation between overall mutual fund CG preference and the corporate governance premium (CGP). Furthermore, the investment preferences of mutual funds forecast the change in the CGP. We provide evidence that the investment activities of institutional investors can affect stock performance, and that shifts by institutional investors in CG preference impact the appearance of the CGP.     

Governance and Performance Implications of Diversification Strategies: Evidence from Large U.S. Firms

Recent research focuses on explaining the diversification discount. However, there is little direct evidence regarding the relation among ownership structure, corporate governance, and corporate diversification. The results in this paper suggest that agency issues do not account for firms adopting a particular diversification strategy. Also, the performance consequences of the shift in the diversification strategy and the subsequent changes in institutional and block ownership structures are not related to agency issues. In fact, investors seem not to avoid diversified firms per se. We suggest that observed board and ownership differences between diversified and focused firms are due to their being at different stages of corporate evolution.     

Dividend Payouts and Information Shocks

We examine changes in firms’ dividend payouts following an exogenous shock to the information asymmetry problem between managers and investors. Agency theories predict a decrease in dividend payments to the extent that improved public information lowers managers’ need to convey their commitment to avoid overinvestment via costly dividend payouts. Conversely, dividends could increase if minority investors are in a better position to extract cash dividends. We test these predictions by analyzing the dividend payment behavior of a global sample of firms around the mandatory adoption of IFRS and the initial enforcement of new insider trading laws. Both events serve as proxies for a general improvement of the information environment and, hence, the corporate governance structure in the economy. We find that, following the two events, firms are less likely to pay (increase) dividends, but more likely to cut (stop) such payments. The changes occur around the time of the informational shock, and only in countries and for firms subject to the regulatory change. They are more pronounced when the inherent agency issues or the informational shocks are stronger. We further find that the information content of dividends decreases after the events. The results highlight the importance of the agency costs of free cash flows (and changes therein) for shaping firms’ payout policies.     

Corporate site visits and earnings management

This study conducts the first analysis of the association between earnings management (EM) and corporate site visits. Results show that a corporate’s accrual-based EM is negatively associated with investors’ site visits, the number of external participants, especially institutional investors, and the depth and breadth of communication during a site visit. However, no significant relationship is found between the presence of core managers, non-institutional investors and accrual-based EM. Our findings provide significant implications for investors and regulators who seek to constrain EM.     

Corporate Governance and the Informational Efficiency of Prices

We explore the relation between corporate governance and the informational efficiency of prices (IEP). We find that IEP increases with the quality of corporate governance in a large cross‐section of firms. We show that firms with better governance structures file Form 8‐K reports more promptly and have more accurate analysts’ earnings forecasts, suggesting that corporate voluntary disclosures and analyst forecasts are channels through which corporate governance affects IEP. The positive relation between IEP and governance quality cannot be attributed to reverse causality or other confounding factors (e.g., analyst following, stock market liquidity, and institutional ownership). On the whole, our results show that better governance structures lead to higher IEP by improving the speed and extent of corporate information disclosures.     

Corporate Governance in China: a Step Forward

Recently, the presumed benefits of corporate governance have become one of the most contentious issues especially for emerging markets in Asia where institutional settings are quite different from other parts of the world. Using an internationally accepted benchmark (OECD's Principles of Corporate Governance, OECD, 2004 ), this study evaluates the progress of corporate governance practice of Chinese listed companies. A corporate governance index (CGI) is constructed to measure the quality of corporate governance practices of the 100 largest listed firms in China during 2004‐2006. The results show that Chinese companies have been making progress in the corporate governance reform. The findings also show a positive relation between market valuation and overall corporate governance practices, as measured by the CGI, among these Chinese listed companies. Additional investigation reveals that the rights of shareholders are the main driver in the relationship.     

Do corporate governance attributes affect adverse selection costs? Evidence from seasoned equity offerings

We examine the relation between corporate governance attributes and perceived information asymmetry. In a sample of seasoned equity offerings between 1996 and 2001, we find that board independence, size of the audit committee, and officer and director ownership mitigate the negative effect of the equity offering announcement on share prices. These results are consistent with the notion that investors perceive certain governance systems to better align manager and shareholder incentives, which improves firm access to capital markets.