A measure of the synergy in mergers under a competitive market for corporate control

Summary and Conclusion This note developed a possible measure of the anticipated synergy in mergers under the assumption that the market for corporate control is competitive. By applying Tobin'sq theory of investment, a measure which is composed of three potentially measurable variables is derived. The three variables are: the acquisition premium paid by he buying firm, the market value, and the replacement costs of the target firm. This measure may be utilized to do empirical studies involving the synergy in mergers regardless of the type of the merger and the source of the synergy. When the market for corporate control is not necessarily competitive, the inequality version of the measure gives the lower bound of the anticipated synergy and upper bound of the premium. In the special case of conglomerate mergers where economies of scope is the only source of synergy, the measure may also be interpreted as the present value of the anticipated economies of scope.     

负债企业并购的时机与条件及在国企产权转让中的应用

应用实物期权博弈理论和方法研究在随机市场环境下，目标企业存在财务杠杆情形下，企业并购的时间和条件。研究表明，目标企业支付的息票越高，目标企业所在行业的波动率越低，行业的成长性越低，目标企业的最优保证金率越低。目标企业支付的息票越高，负债率高，将加速被并购。波动率延迟了并购。模型可应用于国有企业的产权转让，表明国有企业产权是可以定价的，依据是企业本身的价值，包括由现有的资产经营所产生的现金流现值和转让期权。价格的高低取决于所在行业的特征，市场的税率，并购者的期望，负债率等。根据前面的分析，国有企业所在行业的成长性越高，波动率越大，市场的税率越低，并购者的期望越高，产权转让市场越活跃，企业的负债率越低，国有企业产权转让的价格越高。通过公开拍卖是产权转让定价的最佳方式。     

当前经济环境下中国企业跨国并购的必然性和存在问题分析

跨国并购是中国企业取得海外目标企业品牌、技术、市场的重要方式,是中国企业实现快速发展、开展全球化经营的必然方式。随着中国经济的增长、人民币持续升值,尤其在金融危机及欧债危机的背景下,中国企业普遍认为现阶段为海外收购的绝佳时机,因此跨国并购案例日益增多。本文探讨了中国企业在当前全球环境下跨国并购的优势,同时指出中国企业跨国并购面临的诸多问题和潜在风险,并就该些风险提出建议。     

Determinants of cross-border merger premia

Firms have a broad range of rationales for engaging in cross-border mergers and other forms of foreign direct investment (FDI); while some companies are in search of the cost advantages provided by foreign resources, other firms are primarily interested in gaining access to new markets. Although a significant amount of research has explored the patterns of FDI, little work has been done to assess what influences the value of cross-border mergers and, in particular, what determines why some cross-border mergers are expected to result in higher synergies when compared to others. This paper explores what characteristics of a merger are expected to increase the synergies that a firm will accrue from a cross-border merger by testing how a variety of factors impact the premia paid to effectuate a cross-border merger. We find that firms are willing to pay a higher premium to obtain greater control over foreign firms, and that this control is even more important in mergers involving firms in emerging markets. We also find that the factors affecting deal premia in cross-border mergers differ based on whether the acquirer has a high or low intangible asset intensity level.     

Firm Size and Work Compensation in China

Remarkably, recent research on the Chinese labor market has suggested that the situation in China is inconsistent with the stylized fact that large firms pay higher wages and offer more generous benefits. Expanding the empirical basis from 78 to 300 000 industrial firms, I overturn theprevious result andshow that wage determination in the averagefirmfits the international norm. Exploring subsamples of firms I also point to a likely source for the conflictingfindings： firm size is positively correlatedwith the average wage in private firms, but negatively correlated with the average wage in the state-owned sector. These novel results couM guide future studies aiming to understand the sources of the firm size wage premium, and, in particular, studies that target the largest industrial labor market in the world     

Stackelberg横向兼并博弈的分析

文章通过增加"蛇吞象"式兼并分析,扩展了Steffen-Kai-Wieland模型,研究结果表明:无论"大鱼吃小鱼","蛇吞象","强强联合",还是"弱者联合"的兼并,四种兼并对参与企业都是有利可图的.但这些兼并都会提高市场集中度,导致消费者福利下降.     

商业银行服务小额收费行为的博弈研究

近年来,我国商业银行逐步改变了以往对存款、查询等个人业务实行免费的政策,开始对这些服务项目采取小额收费。本文用博弈论方法对银行的小额收费和消费者行为进行了经济学分析,认为银行小额收费虽然符合市场经济的特征,但其定价行为需要规范,并就此提出应当实行价格听证制度和最低服务制度,同时建议政府出台政策鼓励银行机构创新和银行业务创新。     

Multinational activity and CEO compensation: Preliminary evidence from large UK firms

Multinational Activity and CEO Compensation: Preliminary Evidence from Large UK Firms. — Since the early 1980s the rate of growth in executive remuneration has consistently outpaced that of average earnings. This phenomenon has been widely assumed to be part of an internationalization of the executive labor market. This paper starts from the premise that the multinational enterprise will be a major agent in such a market and presents some preliminary tests for the impact of multinational activity in general, and specific regional effects in particular, on CEO remuneration using a sample of large UK firms. Surprisingly, we find no evidence to support our conjecture that CEO pay will be positively related to firm involvement in the United States. However, multinational activity does generate a significant premium over purely domestic activity.     

The Impact of Litigation Risk on Auditor Pricing Behavior: Evidence From Reverse Mergers

We use reverse mergers to examine the impact of litigation risk on audit fees. In a reverse merger, a private company merges with a public company, and the private company's management takes over the resulting publicly traded firm. Reverse mergers create a unique test setting to provide estimates on the litigation risk premium because, while the litigation risk for formerly private firms whose equity becomes publicly traded increases, the remaining auditee‐ and auditor‐related characteristics remain virtually unchanged. We document a litigation risk premium of approximately 27 percent. Moreover, we document that equity dispersion impacts the audit fee pricing of litigation risk and this relation is dramatically magnified in the publicly traded realm. Finally, we find that institutional investors demand higher audit effort in the form of higher audit fees in both the private‐ and public‐equity settings.     

二级分行内设机构设置刍议

在日趋激烈的市场竞争中 ,商业银行要想站稳脚跟 ,立于不败之地 ,就要改革自身管理模式 ,以市场需要为导向 ,建立简洁、流畅的组织机构和业务流程 ,同时要加强员工培训 ,建立一支适应机构改革需要的员工队伍     

中国企业“逆周期”跨国并购研究

"新常态"经济周期中,中国企业跨国并购有何特征?从经济政策频繁波动的现实出发,如何理解跨国并购的"逆周期"成因?文章基于2001-2016年中国企业对91个国家的跨国并购数据,实证检验了经济周期、经济政策不确定性对跨国并购的影响,得出以下结论：首先,中国企业的跨国并购具有显著的"逆周期"特征,下行经济周期加剧了并购规模提升;其次,经济政策不确定性与跨国并购正相关,并且在国有企业中和2008年金融危机后表现为更明显;最后,经济政策不确定性差距以及市场增长潜力差距均提升了并购规模。     

The long-term impact of mergers and the emergence of a merger wave in pre-World-War I Germany

Using annual data on mergers for 35 leading German companies from 1870 to 1913, my study tries to explain the first merger wave that emerged 1898. My panel probit model that accounted for economies of scale, macroeconomic conditions, success of former mergers, and market structure revealed that previous mergers made subsequent mergers more likely. The propensity to merge was higher for larger companies that increased their market power. In the banking industry, managers imitated mergers, although these mergers were not successful, and hence followed the minimax regret principle. Rational information-based herding caused the serial dependency of mergers in other industries.     

Foreign Exchange Risk,Equity Risk Factors and Economic Growth

This paper examines the information content of the equity risk factors that explain cross variation of stock returns and predicting future macroeconomic growth. For the first time we incorporate a new foreign exchange risk factor, providing important insights into the relationship between risk factors and the business cycle. The methodology involves the performance of a stepwise regression analysis of future macroeconomic growth against the lagged returns of five risk factors (market risk premium, size, value, momentum and foreign exchange risk). The results are validated with Granger causality tests and out-of-sample dynamic forecasting. They show that the foreign exchange risk factor contains strong, stable and statistically significant incremental information concerning future macroeconomic growth. Firms that are sensitive to the foreign exchange risk thrive when an economic upturn is anticipated and firms that are insensitive to the foreign exchange risk will have larger returns when an economic downturn is anticipated.     

Does religion enhance firm performance? Evidence from private firms in China

We study the impact of religiosity on firm performance in China. We find that entrepreneurs with religious beliefs have higher accounting performance. Firms are more likely to obtain bank credit if entrepreneurs have religious beliefs as religiosity stimulate them to invest more in networking, which further enhance the access to bank credit. Religious entrepreneurs have more trust towards external people, which incentivizes them to adopt a shareholding reform and employ external professional CEOs instead of family members, and thus enhances the corporate governance of these firms. In contrast, religious entrepreneurs also prefer family members as shareholders and inheritance of the firm by family members. The preference of inheritance of the firm by family members undermines the enhancing effect of external CEOs on firm performance. Religious entrepreneurs are more likely to spend more on safety insurance for employees, which is driven by the altruism originated from religious doctrines and also the risk aversion channel. The impact of religiosity complements market institutions, and political and social status of the entrepreneurs, which shows the interaction between religion and formal market institutions. We find that it's mainly Buddhism that drives our results, while other religions have limited impact on business activities in the country.     

Value creating mergers: British bank consolidation, 1885–1925

The British banking sector had many small banks in the mid-nineteenth century. From around 1885 until the end of World War One there was a process of increasingly larger mergers between banks. By the end of the merger wave the English and Welsh market was highly concentrated, with only five major banks. News of a merger brought a persistent rise in the share prices of both the acquiring and the target bank (roughly 1% and 7%, respectively). Non-merging banks, especially those whose local market concentration rose because of the merger, saw their stock prices rise. Our findings suggest that the process of bank consolidation increased collusive behavior among merged banks, to the likely detriment of the consumer.     

Japan's elderly small business managers: Performance and succession

We investigate the effects of succession from an elderly to a nonelderly small business manager using firm-level data for Japan. The number of elderly small business managers has increased in Japan with the aging of the population; therefore, succession to younger managers has become an important policy issue. We make use of data for 2001–2015 for 188,021 small businesses, of which 77,773 at some point have a manager aged 60 or older and 8711 of these transition to a manager of under age 60. First, we investigate the relationship between firm performance and manager age. Performance is found to be lower for firms with elderly managers. Second, we estimate the determinants of succession in small businesses with elderly managers, showing that larger, less leveraged, more cash-rich, and profitable firms are more likely to transition to younger managers. Our results imply that more poorly performing firms are less likely to replace elderly managers, suggesting that such firms are not selected by young managers. Third, we examine post-succession performance using propensity score matching. Succession from elderly to young managers is shown to have positive effects on sales, employment, assets, return on assets, capital investment, and cash holdings. These results imply that succession improves firm growth. Furthermore, young successors tend to accumulate cash holdings implying that they are more risk averse and/or face tighter credit constraints than their predecessors.     

Export Activity,Firm Size and Wage Structure: Evidence from Taiwanese Manufacturing Firms*

This study adopts a semiparametric smooth coefficient model to evaluate the export–wage premiums, firm size–wage premiums, and the wage gap between skilled and unskilled labor. Particular focus is placed upon widespread evidence indicating that pay levels in ‘large’ and ‘export‐oriented’ firms are higher than in their ‘small’ and ‘domestic‐oriented’ counterparts. Applying the firm‐level data for Taiwanese manufacturing firms, we find a positive export–wage premium for skilled workers and a negative export–wage premium for unskilled workers. The hypothesis of a constant export premium across firm size is rejected. While most of the export–wage premiums for skilled labor can be attributed to the small and medium firms, the large exporting firms have a significant adverse effect on wages for unskilled labor. Moreover, our results suggest that the firm size–wage premiums for skilled workers are larger than those for unskilled workers. The wage gap between the two skill groups is also sensitive to size categories.     

Local Responsive Talent Management for Foreign Multinational Enterprises in China

China evolves with amazing speed to be a leading player in the world economy. However, the transformation from isolated centrally planned to internationally open market economy during the past 25 years has occurred so fast that the change in the mindset and the adaptation of new modern business practice is still in progress. Foreign multinational enterprises in the mainland of China responded to the resulting shortcomings of Chinese professionals and managers by covering the key position in the organization by their own resources or managers from neighbor Asian countries. In this qualitative study, a new local responsive talent management concept for foreign multinational enterprises with expatriated managers was proposed under special consideration of the cultural business environment in China. The establishment of a learning firm culture with advanced training system to compensate the drawbacks of Chinese professionals was outlined. The coverage of the key positions in the organization by Chinese professionals with established social network and optionally supported by temporary foreign advisors was proposed to improve the firm climax, domestic customer and stakeholder relations.     

The Forgotten Risk: Financial Incentives

Summary  The number of risks that are taken into account by risk managers has grown over the years, but they still have a blind spot for the danger that remuneration schemes and financial incentives can lead to more risk taking. Such an effect constitutes a regime change, making standard statistical analyses of previous data obsolete. Common remuneration contracts for hedge fund managers and bank traders provoke risk taking and lead to volatile results. The incentive structure of rating agencies sheds doubts on the quality of their judgment. Risk managers should address the behavioral effects of incentive schemes, both inside and outside their firm. Incentive schemes should be corrected in such a way that only long-term results pay off. CEO, ABN-AMRO Bank and former Minister of Finance. These comments were prepared for the occasion of the Jelle Zijlstra Lecture by Martin Hellwig at the VU University, Amsterdam, May 27, 2008, when Gerrit Zalm was CFO of DSB Bank.     

A Portion of Profits to Charity: Corporate Social Responsibility and Firm Profitability

I develop a model in which a firm can choose to donate a portion of its profits to the provision of a public good. Consumers value this public good and are willing to pay a price premium to a firm which makes such a donation. When this price premium is sufficiently large, the firm can raise its net profits by pledging a portion of those profits to provision of the public good. This is more likely when the consumer's marginal valuation of contributions to the public good is high and when the firm (in the absence of donations) has a high ratio of fixed costs to operating profits. I also identify circumstances under which corporate social responsibility makes consumers worse off.