Audit pricing and nature of controlling shareholders: Evidence from France

This study examines whether auditors are employed as a monitoring mechanism to mitigate agency problems arising from different types of controlling shareholders. In a context of concentrated ownership and poor investor protection, controlling shareholders can easily expropriate wealth from minority shareholders and profit from private benefits of control. However, this agency conflict has been rarely studied, as the most commonly assumed agency conflict occurs between managers and shareholders. Using an audit fee model derived from Simunic (1980), we study the impact of the nature of controlling shareholders on audit fees in French listed firms. Our results show: (1) a negative relationship between audit fees and government shareholdings; (2) a positive relationship between audit fees and institutional shareholdings; and (3) no relationship between audit fees and family shareholdings. These results illustrate the mixed effects of the nature of ownership on audit fees.     

The rise of UK Seasoned Equity Offerings (SEOs) fees during the financial crisis: The role of institutional shareholders and underwriters

This paper investigates the increase in underwriting fees for UK SEOs since the beginning of the financial crisis in mid-2007. We develop and test a number of hypotheses related to the role of institutional shareholders and underwriters involved in the issuing process. We find that the rise in fees is related to the strengthening of the relative negotiating position of a specific underwriter in comparison to a specific issuer and to the growing influence of institutional shareholders with short-term investment horizons. Our evidence suggests that there may be reasonable grounds for considering potential conflicts of interest due to the dual role of institutional shareholders as investors and sub-underwriters. On the other hand, the ownership size of large shareholders and the reputation of underwriters have a moderating effect on fees, while the nationality of the institutional shareholders, the concentration of the investment bank industry and the experience of corporate issuers are not related to underwriting fees.     

Large shareholders’ power and the quality of corporate governance: An analysis of Brazilian firms

This paper analyzes the incentives of large shareholders to implement the corporate governance system that favors their interests within a framework of highly concentrated ownership and poor legal protection for investors. A metric for corporate governance based on the fulfillment of non-mandatory rules of good corporate governance is used. System GMM (Generalized Method of Moments) estimates for a balanced panel data of Brazilian firms reveal that the ownership concentration is detrimental to corporate governance quality and the quality of board composition. In accordance with the expropriation effect on principal-principal agency conflicts, by weakening the corporate governance system and board composition, large controlling shareholders may use private benefits of control. As proposed by the substitution effect, in a complementary way, controlling shareholders may renounce strong boards and directly perform management monitoring, mitigating agency conflicts with managers. Finally, the ability of large shareholders other than the main blockholder is not enough to contest his/her power to shape the corporate governance system. The work provides evidence of the prominence of the principal–principal agency problem in an emerging market, by analyzing the effect of ownership concentration over the quality of the corporate governance system, and also that other large non-controlling shareholders are not able to contest the power of the main blockholder.     

Non-audit fees, institutional monitoring, and audit quality

We posit that the effect of non-audit fees on audit quality is conditional on the extent of institutional monitoring. We suggest that institutional investors have incentives and the ability to monitor financial reporting quality. Because of the reputation concerns and potential litigation exposure, auditors are likely to provide high audit quality, when they also provide non-audit services to clients, particularly when clients are subject to high institutional monitoring. We find evidence that, as non-audit fees increase, audit quality (measured by performance-adjusted discretionary current accruals and earnings-response coefficients) reduces only for clients with low institutional ownership but not for clients with high institutional ownership. Our results are robust after controlling for auditor industry specialization, firms’ operating volatility, size effect, and potential endogeneity between institutional ownership and audit quality.     

Shareholder coordination and corporate innovation

We show that greater shareholder coordination, as proxied by the geographic proximity between institutional investors, is positively related to corporate innovation outcomes. This relationship is driven by coordination among dedicated and independent institutions who have strong monitoring incentives and is more pronounced among firms with lower blockholder ownership and greater information asymmetry where there is greater benefit to monitoring. We propose that shareholder coordination promotes corporate innovation through a reduction in managerial agency problems. Overall, our results are consistent with the notion that greater shareholder coordination enables diffuse shareholders to monitor managers more effectively and enhances corporate innovation.     

The empirical relationship between ownership characteristics and audit fees

The present study examines the empirical relationship between ownership characteristics and audit fees. The basic premise is that the level of ownership sophistication and the extent to which ownership is large and substantial impact the effectiveness of stockholder monitoring on corporate affairs including the financial reporting process. Furthermore, high managerial ownership firms may experience a decline in agency problems in financial reporting due to a decrease in managerial propensity to misreport financial results. By employing a cross-sectional least squares regression analysis for a sample of 358 New York Stock Exchange-listed firms audited by the Big Five auditors, we find evidence of a significantly positive relationship between diffused institutional stock ownership (i.e., having less than 5% individual shareholding) and audit fees, and a significantly negative relationship between institutional blockholder ownership (i.e., having 5% or more individual shareholding) and audit fees. Finally, we document that managerial stock ownership is negatively associated with audit fees. We do not, however, find evidence of any relationship between noninstitutional blockholder ownership (with at least 5% individual stock ownership) and audit fees. The study's main results hold in various specification tests including when the effects of board-related and audit committee variables are factored in the analysis. Based on the observed relationship between the ownership variables and audit fees, we suggest that the ownership characteristics of a firm as a part of its governance mechanism constitute an important determinant of audit fees.

Does ownership concentration improve M&A outcomes in emerging markets?: Evidence from India

Using firm level data from India, we examine the impact of ownership concentration on post-M&A performance of firms. Our analysis has implications for both the M&A literature, which emphasises the role of agency conflict between managers and owners of widely held companies as a key reason for M&A failures, and the corporate governance literature, especially in the context of emerging market economies. A cautious interpretation of our results suggests that while ownership concentration may reduce the manager–owner agency conflict, it may nevertheless precipitate other forms of agency conflict such that ownership concentration may not necessarily improve post-M&A performance. In particular, our results have implications for the literature on the agency conflict between large (or majority) shareholders and small (or minority) shareholders of a company, especially in contexts such as emerging market economies where corporate governance quality is weak.     

Independent director reputation incentives,accruals quality and audit fees

While prior research provides abundant evidence that independent directors are associated with favorable outcomes, researchers have only recently started to investigate the impact of independent director reputation incentives. This study examines whether the reputation incentives of independent directors are associated with accruals quality and audit fees. The results reveal a negative relationship between the proportion of independent directors with relatively low reputation incentives and accruals quality. Further, the proportion of independent directors with relatively low reputation incentives is positively associated with audit fees, suggesting that auditors view lower reputation incentives as increasing risk. We also find that Big 4/5 auditor office size moderates the relationship between independent director reputation incentives and audit fees. Specifically, our results indicate that audit fees increase less in response to lower reputation incentives as office size increases, suggesting that larger offices respond to the risks associated with lower reputation incentives more efficiently than smaller offices.     

Do Big-Four affiliates earn audit fee premiums in emerging markets?

The paper investigates whether Big-Four affiliated (B4A) firms earn audit premiums in an emerging economy context, using Bangladesh as a case. The joint determination of audit and non-audit service fees is also examined using a sample of 122 companies listed in the Dhaka Stock Exchange. Our findings reveal that although the B4A firms do not generally earn a fee premium in Bangladesh, they charge higher audit fees for clients not purchasing non-audit services. This suggests that the B4A firms may actually lower audit fees to attract non-audit services, and cross subsidizes audit fees through non-audit-services fees. The lack of a B4A premium implies that there is lack of quality audit in emerging markets. We also document that audit and non-audit service fees are jointly determined in Bangladesh. Thus, we provide evidence of joint determination of audit and non-audit service fees in an emerging economy context.     

Managerial Self-Interest, Pension Financial Slack and Corporate Pension Funding

This paper examines the impact of managerial self-interest on corporate pension funding decisions. It is postulated that managers with no ownership stake in the firm will have incentives to maintain financial slack in the form of excess pension funding. Pension funding slack may be viewed as a managerial perquisite that decreases the probability of necessary future debt financing. Such a strategy may increase the value of undiversified human capital to the detriment of maximizing shareholder wealth. As managerial ownership increases, the incentives to consume such a perquisite will decrease since the interests of managers and shareholders become more aligned. The results presented in this study strongly support this proposition.     

Local creative culture and audit fees

This paper examines the association between local creative culture and audit fees. Using a large, unbalanced panel data of listed US firms between 2004 and 2018, we find evidence that firms headquartered in US counties with high creative culture tend to pay higher audit fees than firms headquartered in counties with low creative culture. We also find that such firms tend to have longer audit report lag and are subject to more shareholder litigation. Cross-sectional tests show that real earnings management, managerial risk-taking propensity, and external corporate governance environment moderate the positive association between creative culture and audit fees. The positive association between local creative culture and audit fees remains robust to controlling for endogeneity concerns. Our study contributes to the emerging literature on local creative culture by providing evidence that local creative culture encourages managers and employees to undertake risky initiatives, thereby increasing audit risks.     

CORPORATE OWNERSHIP AND CONTROL IN THE U.K., GERMANY, AND FRANCE

Like its U.S. counterpart, the U.K. corporate ownership and governance system can be characterized as an outsider system with a large number of public corporations, widely dispersed ownership (though with growing concentrations of institutional shareholdings), and well-developed takeover markets. By contrast, the much smaller number and proportion of publicly traded German and French corporations are governed by insider systems--those in which the founding families, banks, or other companies have controlling interests and in which outside shareholders are not able to exert much control.
The different patterns of ownership in the U.K. and in France and Germany give rise to different incentives and corporate control mechanisms. Concentrated ownership would seem to encourage longer-term relationships between the company and its investors. But, while perhaps better suited to some corporate activities with longer-term payoffs, concentrated ownership could also lead to costly delays in undertaking necessary corrective action, particularly if the owners receive "private" benefits from owning and running a business. And, although widely dispersed ownership may increase the likelihood that corrective action will be sought prematurely (as outsiders rush to sell their shares in response to a temporary downturn), the presence of well-diversified public owners may also be more appropriate for riskier ventures requiring large amounts of new capital investment.
Thus, concentrated ownership, while having the potential to reduce information costs and to strengthen incentives to maximize value, can also impose costs in two ways: (1) by forcing managers and other insiders to bear excessive company-specific risks that could be transferred to well-diversified outsiders; and (2) by allowing insiders to capture private benefits at the expense of outsiders.     

Corporate governance and audit fees: Evidence from companies listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange

This study uses data from companies listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange to investigate the relationship between corporate governance and audit fees. Full sample results reveal a significant negative relationship between corporate governance and audit fees, and subsample results further show that corporate governance’s influence on audit fees is affected by corporate growth. The negative relationship between corporate governance and audit fees is economically and statistically significant in sample companies that grew moderately during the sample period, and mixed or insignificant in companies that experienced overly fast or negative growth.     

融资约束、审计费用与现金持有价值

审计费用和现金持有价值是公司财务审计研究领域的两个重要话题。审计费用高低所隐含的公司风险程度影响着投资者对公司增加现金持有量将产生积极还是消极效应的判断,会导致公司股票超额回报率的变化,进而也可能影响其现金持有价值,目前尚无相关的研究。本文以现金持有的边际价值模型为基础,引入审计费用和融资约束变量,对融资约束条件下审计费用与公司现金持有价值的关系进行研究后发现,过高的审计费用会降低公司的现金持有价值,审计费用增加得越多,公司的现金持有价值越低。进一步的分析发现,相对于其面临较高程度的融资约束时,公司面临较低程度的融资约束时审计费用对其现金持有价值的负向影响更为显著。     

机构投资者持股、高管激励与大股东掏空抑制

激励和监督是公司治理最基本的重要手段,从这两方面入手探讨机构投资者持股、高管激励对大股东掏空抑制的影响。研究发现,机构投资者持股不仅可以抑制大股东掏空行为,还可以增强高管激励的力度;此外,利用中介效应检验模型,还发现机构投资者抑制大股东掏空的路径,即机构投资者主要通过高管激励中介影响大股东掏空行为。研究结论可以丰富公司治理的研究问题,为解决现实中存在的大股东掏空行为提供借鉴。     

Insider trading and managerial incentives

We derive conditions under which permitting manager “insiders” to trade on personal account increases the equilibrium level of output and the welfare of shareholders. These increases are produced by two effects of insider trading. First, insider trading impounds information about hidden managerial actions into asset prices. This impounding of information allows shareholders to make better personal portfolio-allocation decisions. Second, allowing insider trading can induce managers to increase, on average, the correlation between their personal wealth and firm value beyond the level dictated by the employment relationship alone. This increased correlation increases managerial incentives. When these two effects are only weakly present, permitting insider trading harms shareholders, because insider trading reduces shareholder control over the performance–compensation relationship. In addition, when managerial effort incentives are high and corporate governance costs are low, managers may prefer insider-trading restrictions because such restrictions force shareholders to offer them a larger fraction of output through the employment relationship.     

Estructura de propiedad y su efecto en la política de dividendos en el contexto mexicano

In this paper we focus on analyzing if the ownership structure has any effect on the dividend policy in the Mexican market. The decision to pay dividends is one of the key elements within corporate policy, since that dividend policy has an influence on the company value. Therefore, decisions such as adopting a growth policy of the company through the profits reinvestment or destine these profits to dividends pay, could be influenced by the ownership structure. We base our analysis on three types of ownership structure: families, institutions (mainly banks) and small blocks of shareholders. Our results show that the concentration of ownership in families has a negative influence on the dividends payment, while the presence of institutional shareholders has an inverse effect. This indicates that the presence of large shareholders different to families have a dissimilar effect on dividend policy. Our work contributes to the literature in the context of emerging countries such as Mexico, since much of the existing research has focused primarily in environments such as Europe or the United States, where markets are well regulated with widely distributed property.     

Liquidity,ownership concentration,corporate governance,and firm value: Evidence from Thailand

We examine the interactions among ownership structure, liquidity, and corporate governance in an important emerging market. The results suggest that firms with more concentrated ownership experience significantly lower stock liquidity. Large shareholders are assumed to possess private information, leading to information asymmetry and thus a higher adverse selection cost. As a result, higher ownership concentration is associated with less liquidity. Nevertheless, there is no evidence that corporate governance plays a significant role in the relationship between ownership and liquidity in Thailand.     

Non‐Audit Service Fees and Financial Reporting Quality: A Meta‐Analysis

Auditing as a corporate governance mechanism has attracted considerable research attention. Because of the information asymmetry between corporate managers and outside shareholders, auditors are hired to provide independent assurance that financial statements are prepared following generally accepted accounting principles. The credibility of such assurance depends on the independence, both in fact and in appearance, of the auditor. Over the years, however, the independence of auditors has come under increased scrutiny because of their joint provision of both audit and non‐audit services. A sizable literature on the impact of non‐audit fees on financial reporting quality has developed. The evidence from this literature, however, remains inconclusive. This paper provides a meta‐analysis of the available literature by assessing (a) the net effect of non‐audit fees on financial reporting quality, and (b) whether there is homogeneity in the financial reporting quality proxies used in the extant literature. Findings suggest that the level of client‐specific non‐audit fees is associated with reduced financial reporting quality. However, the underlying studies used to conduct this meta‐analysis are not homogenous.     

Shareholder Rights, Boards, and CEO Compensation

I analyze the role of executive compensation in corporate governance.As proxies for corporate governance, I use board size, boardindependence, CEO-chair duality, institutional ownership concentration,CEO tenure, and an index of shareholder rights. The resultsfrom a broad cross-section of large U.S. public firms are inconsistentwith recent claims that entrenched managers design their owncompensation contracts. The interactions of the corporate governancemechanisms with total pay-for-performance and excess compensationcan be explained by governance substitution. If a firm has generallyweaker governance, the compensation contract helps better alignthe interests of shareholders and the CEO.