Do Credit Ratings Really Affect Capital Structure?

This paper revisits recent investigations into the role credit ratings play in the marginal financing behavior of firms. Although it has long been documented that credit ratings may be an important determinant of firm capital structure policy, academics have only recently subjected this motivation to empirical scrutiny. We add to the brief existing literature by investigating the sensitivity of marginal financing behavior of firms to a number of attributes deemed to capture firms’ affinity to emphasize credit ratings in their financing behavior. Our results suggest that credit ratings are not a first‐order concern in capital structure decisions.     

Non-rating revenue and conflicts of interest

Rating agencies produce ratings used by investors, but obtain most of their revenue from issuers, leading to a conflict of interest. We employ a unique data set on the use of non-rating services, and the associated payments, in India, to test if this conflict affects ratings quality. Agencies rate issuers that pay them for non-rating services higher (than agencies not hired for such services). Such issuers also have higher default rates. Both effects are increasing in the amount paid. These results suggest that issuers which hire agencies for non-rating services receive higher ratings despite having higher default risk.     

Can an Asia Pacific Community,similar to the European Community,emerge?

The purpose of this paper is to analyse whether the Asia Pacific region could form a union similar to the one now established in Europe. To this end, it analyses some of the major challenge faced by the US prior to its union in the 19th century and the way countries such as France and Germany contributed to the formation of the EU, despite their past animosity. The paper proposed a two tier system for the emergence of a union in the Asia Pacific region in which all countries could become part of a regional framework for regional security and free trade and some of the more advanced countries in the region could start the process of financial integration and invite other member countries to join them over time. The paper argues that in the 2st century, unlike the claim of the “currency optimum theory,” there is no need for labour mobility amongst Asian countries for the formation of a union in this region and hence Australia should not expect millions of workers from China to migrate there. The paper argues that the role of Japan and China in the process of regional integration has been underestimated, due to the claim that the former is a monoculture and the latter is too nationalistic. The paper highlights how diversity in the region could be seen as a strength in the Asia Pacific region. It also shows how the process of globalisation has already overcome differences in culture, religion and race which used to be stumbling blocks for more regional or global integration. The paper argues that a union in the Asia Pacific region would reduce “home bias” for international capital flows and hence there would be significant financial transformation of countries in this region.     

A theory of the transition to secondary market trading of IPOs

We develop a model in which investment banks and institutional investors collaborate in smoothing an initial public offering's (IPOs) transition to secondary market trading. Their intervention promotes welfare under the assumption that significant new information arrives in the market in the immediate aftermath of the IPO. Under this assumption, it is optimal to stage the offering and suboptimal to commit to selling shares at a uniform price. The optimal strategy yields an economic rationale for secondary market price stabilization for IPOs carried out via a well-coordinated network of repeat institutional investors.     

The investment strategies of publicly sponsored venture capital funds

This paper investigates the effects of public ownership on the investment strategy of hybrid VC funds. We exploit a unique dataset containing data for all of the venture capital funds in Europe that received financial support from the European Investment Fund (EIF) during the years 1998–2007. The dataset includes 179 VC funds that invested in 2482 companies. We find that the level of public ownership shows a weak negative correlation with the likelihood of observing a write-off and that a higher public share is associated with a longer duration for the investment. The latter effect is more relevant for those investments that generate intermediate financial returns. The results are robust to the introduction of controls at the target firm level and for financial market conditions.     

Do Corporate Governance Analysts Matter? Evidence from the Expansion of Governance Analyst Coverage

T his paper examines the economic consequences of the initiation of governance analyst coverage. Governance analysts process, enhance, and disseminate governance‐related information to capital market participants via, for example, governance reports and ratings. Using an exogenous shock in the United Kingdom, I find that an increase in governance analyst coverage results in increased governance quality, improved liquidity, increased financial analyst following, and improved investor breadth. These findings are consistent with governance analysts creating value for firms via monitoring, information dissemination/production, and investor recognition.     

Moody's and S&P Ratings: Are They Equivalent? Conservative Ratings and Split Rated Bond Yields

We examine the relative impact of Moody's and S&P ratings on bond yields and find that at issuance, yields on split rated bonds with superior Moody's ratings are about 8 basis points lower than yields on split rated bonds with superior S&P ratings. This suggests that investors differentiate between the two ratings and assign more weight to the ratings from Moody’s, the more conservative rating agency. Moody's becomes more conservative after 1998 and the impact of a superior Moody's rating becomes stronger. Furthermore, the differential impact of the two ratings is more pronounced for the more opaque Rule 144A issues.     

Are two heads better than one? Evidence from the thrift crisis

We employ a natural experiment from the 1980s, predating the ubiquitous clamor for independence influenced corporate governance structures, to examine which governance mechanisms are associated with firm survival and failure. We find that thrifts were more likely to survive the thrift crisis when their CEO also chaired the firm’s board of directors. On average, chair-holding CEOs undertook less aggressive lending policies than their counterparts who did not chair their boards. Consequently, taxpayer interests were protected by thrifts that bestowed both leadership posts to one person. This is an important policy issue, because taxpayers become the residual claimants for depository institutions that fail as a result of managers adopting risky strategies to exploit underpriced deposit insurance. Our findings corroborate recent evidence that manager-dominated firms resist shareholder pressure to adopt riskier investment strategies to exploit underpriced deposit insurance.     

Testing for Opaqueness in the European Banking Industry: Evidence from Bond Credit Ratings

The question of whether banks are relatively more opaque than non-banking firms is empirically investigated by analyzing the disagreement between rating agencies (split ratings) on 2,473 bonds issued by European firms during the 1993–2003 period. Four main results emerge from the empirical analysis. First, fewer bank issues have split ratings overall, but the predicted probability of a split rating is higher for banks after controlling for risk and other issue characteristics. Second, subordinated bonds are subject to more disagreement between rating agencies. Third, bank opaqueness increases with financial assets and decreases with bank fixed assets. Fourth, bank opaqueness increases with bank size and capital ratio. The implications of these findings for regulatory policy are also discussed. All errors remain those of the author. This paper was prepared while the author was visiting the Department of Finance, Insurance and Real Estate at the Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Florida.     

Firm values and sovereign wealth fund investments

We analyze the impact of sovereign wealth fund (SWF) investments on firm values and provide evidence consistent with the tradeoff between the monitoring and lobbying benefits versus tunneling and expropriation costs of SWFs as blockholders. The data show significant positive (negative) returns to announcements of SWF investments (divestments). The returns are non-monotonic, first rising (falling) and then falling (rising) with the share sought (sold) for investments (divestments). Moreover, we find that SWFs are often active investors. Slightly more than half of the target firms experience one or more events indicative of SWF monitoring activity or influence.     

Will the U.S. bank recapitalization succeed? Eight lessons from Japan

During the financial crisis that started in 2007, the U.S. government has used a variety of tools to try to rehabilitate the U.S. banking industry. Many of those strategies were also used in Japan to combat its banking problems in the 1990s. There are also a surprising number of other similarities between the current U.S. crisis and the recent Japanese crisis. The Japanese policies were only partially successful in recapitalizing the banks until the economy finally started to recover in 2003. From these unsuccessful attempts, we derive eight lessons. In light of these eight lessons, we assess the policies the U.S. has pursued. The U.S. has ignored three of the lessons and it is too early to evaluate the U.S. policies with respect to four of the others. So far, the U.S. has avoided Japan's problem of having impaired banks prop up zombie firms.     

Transparency in IPO mechanism: Retail investors’ participation,IPO pricing and returns

Using data from the transparent Indian IPO setting, the paper examines retail investors’ participation, their influence on IPO pricing and the returns they make on IPO investment. The transparency in the mechanism, which allows investors to observe prior investors’ participation, leads to demand which is concentrated at either one or two points of the offer price range. Analysis of investors’ demand during the offer period shows that the participation of retail investors is significantly influenced by the participation of institutional investors. We examine IPO pricing and find that favourable demand by retail investors is positively associated with a high IPO price even after controlling for demand by institutional investors. Further, we find that due to aggressive bidding by overconfident investors, retail investors are, on average, unlikely to make positive allocation weighted initial returns even in a setting where they do not have to compete with institutional investors. Retail investors, however, can earn significant positive allocation weighted initial returns if they limit their participation in IPOs with above average institutional investors’ demand.     

Investor interest, trading volume, and the choice of IPO mechanism in France

This paper investigates the relationship between underpricing and investor interest level prior to and after the IPO date. Empirical tests show a significant 3-day buy-and-hold abnormal return of 19.15%. It is positively related to the share demand-to-offer ratio in the pre-market period and to trading volume in the aftermarket. Despite a high initial underpricing for some book-built issues, the book-building procedure allows for more effective pricing and a lower divergence of opinion among investors in the aftermarket than the auction-like procedure.