The internal workings of internal capital markets: Cross-country evidence

We derive empirical predictions from the standard investment-cash flow framework on the functioning of internal capital markets (ICM), but circumvent its criticism by focusing on parent cash flow and investment opportunities. We test these predictions using a unique dataset of parent firms and their listed and unlisted subsidiaries in 90 countries over the period 1995–2006. We find that company and country institutional structures matter. (1) Ownership participation of the parent firm in the subsidiary plays a crucial role for the proper functioning of ICMs. The larger the ownership stake of the parent, the better the functioning of the ICM. (2) The best functioning cross-border ICMs can be found in the sub-sample of firms with parents from a country with “strong” institutions and subsidiaries from a country with “weak” institutions. (3) Unlisted subsidiaries are much more dependent on the ICMs their parents provide than listed subsidiaries. Thus, ICMs are not per se “bright” or “dark”, their proper functioning depends on how they are set up.     

Allocative efficiency of internal capital markets: Evidence from equity carve-outs by diversified firms

We examine whether equity carve-outs (ECOs) lead to improvements in the functioning of the internal capital markets (ICM) of diversified firms. Divestitures, including spin-offs, sell-offs, and equity carve-outs, can be employed by firms to improve allocative efficiency. Equity carve-outs, unlike other forms of divestiture, leave the parent's ICM largely intact but provide the opportunity to enhance internal and external corporate governance mechanisms that can improve the parent's ICM. Using a US sample of 354 equity carve-outs completed between 1980 and 2013, we find that the allocative efficiency of parents is augmented significantly following transaction completion. This increase in allocative efficiency is driven by improvements in both the external and internal governance characteristics of parent companies, consistent with the expectation that motivates equity carve-outs.     

Dismantling internal capital markets via spinoff: effects on capital allocation efficiency and firm valuation

We investigate the linkage between changes in firm value and changes in capital allocation efficiency resulting from dismantling internal capital markets via spinoffs. We find no evidence of wholesale misallocation of capital pre-spinoff. On the average, excess value increases following spinoffs. Furthermore, changes in excess value are positively linked to changes in capital allocational efficiency following spinoff. We find that spinoff announcement returns are greater (smaller) when the parent allocates capital to the unit to be spun off in a seemingly less (more) efficient manner. Divested division capital expenditures move toward industry levels after spinoff, regardless of their relative investment opportunities.     

Family entrenchment and internal control: evidence from S&P 1500 firms

Review of Accounting Studies - We examine whether family owners exploit internal control weaknesses for entrenchment purposes and whether the public disclosure requirement under SOX 404 helps...     

Internal capital markets and employee wage: Evidence from China

The existing literature mainly focuses on the economic consequences of the internal capital market at firm level, while rarely literatures explore the effect on individual perspective. Based on manually collected data of the internal capital market from 2007 to 2018 in Chinese business groups, we examined whether and how internal capital market affects the employee wage. We find that internal capital market can add the employees wage. Further, the mechanism analysis shows that internal capital market can improve the employees wage by reducing operating risks, improving capital intensity and alleviating financing constraints. Heterogeneity analysis shows that this effect is more significant for private enterprises. This paper provides useful guideline for the improvement of employee's welfare and then benefit for enhance firm productivity.     

Investment decisions and internal capital markets: Evidence from acquisitions

In this paper, we examine the workings of internal capital markets in diversified firms that engage in related and unrelated corporate acquisitions. Our evidence indicates that bidders invest outside their core business (diversify) when the cash flows of their core business fall behind those of their non-core lines of business. However, bidders invest inside their core business (i.e., undertake non-diversifying investments) when their core business experiences superior cash flows. We also find that bidders whose core business are in industries with low growth prospects engage in diversifying acquisitions while bidders whose core business are in high growth industries undertake non-diversifying acquisitions. The pre-acquisition evidence, then, suggests that firms tend to diversify when the cash flows and the growth opportunities of their core business are considerably lower than those of their non-core business. Subsequent to acquisitions we find that diversifying bidders continue to allocate financial resources from less profitable business segments (i.e., core business) to more profitable business segments (i.e., non-core business). Given the low profitability of diversifying bidders’ core business, this capital resource allocation suggests that diversification increases do not result in capital allocation inefficiencies. The evidence for non-diversifying bidders, however, supports the existence of “corporate socialism” in the sense that there is transfer of funds from the profitable (core) to the less profitable (non-core) business segments in multi-segment bidders. We find that the capital expenditures of bidders’ non-core business segments rely on both core and non-core cash flows.     

Financing constraints and internal capital markets: Evidence from Korean `chaebols'

We compare the investment–cash flow sensitivity of Korean chaebols (conglomerates) and non-chaebol firms. We show that investment–cash flow sensitivity is low and insignificant for chaebol firms but is high and significant for non-chaebol firms. On the other hand, a chaebol firm's investment is significantly related to the growth opportunities but that of a non-chaebol firm is not. A chaebol firm's investment is significantly affected by the cash flow of other firms within the same chaebol even though they are independent legal entities. With these findings, we argue that there is an internal capital market in a chaebol and the internal capital market reduces the financing constraints of the chaebol. However, the operation of the internal capital market does not improve the efficiency of allocation of scarce funds in the Korean economy since we find that chaebols invest more than non-chaebol firms despite their relatively poor growth opportunities.     

The financing and growth of firms in China and India: Evidence from capital markets

This paper studies the extent to which firms in China and India use capital markets to obtain financing and grow. Using new data on domestic and international capital raising and firm performance, it finds that financial market activity has expanded less since the 1990s than aggregate figures suggest. Relatively few firms raise capital and even fewer attract most of the financing. Moreover, firms that issue equity or bonds are different and behave differently from other publicly listed firms. Among other things, they are typically larger and grow faster. The differences between users and nonusers exist before the capital raising, are associated with the probability of raising capital, and become more pronounced afterward. The size distribution of issuing firms shifts more over time than the distribution of those that do not issue, suggesting little convergence in size among listed firms.     

Subsidiary debt,capital structure and internal capital markets

I study external debt issued by operating subsidiaries of diversified firms. Consistent with Kahn and Winton's [2004. Moral hazard and optimal subsidiary structure for financial institutions. Journal of Finance 59, 2537–2575] model, where subsidiary debt mitigates asset substitution, I find firms are more likely to use subsidiary debt when their divisions vary more in risk. Consistent with subsidiary debt mitigating the free cash flow problem, I find that subsidiaries are more likely to have their own external debt when they have fewer growth options and higher cash flow than the rest of the firm. Finally, I find that subsidiary debt mitigates the “corporate socialism” and “poaching” problems modeled in theories of internal capital markets.     

The internal capital markets of business groups: Evidence from intra-group loans

We study business groups? internal capital markets using a unique data set on intra-group lending in Chile (1990–2009). In line with groups? financing advantage, firms that borrow internally have higher investment, leverage, and return on equity (ROE) than other firms. At the margin, controlling shareholders have higher cash-flow rights in borrowing firms than in lending firms. However, there is no robust evidence of minority shareholders losing out from intra-group loans as tunneling predicts. Our evidence is consistent with the idea that strict regulation and disclosure requirements for intra-group loans, which are features of the Chilean market, reduce the risk of expropriation in pyramids.     

Risk-sharing function in internal capital markets: Evidence from intragroup reinsurance activities

This study explicitly investigates the risk-sharing function of internal capital markets by analyzing intragroup reinsurance (a substitute for capital) activities in the United States' non-life insurance sector. We find supporting evidence that intragroup reinsurance participants are generally associated with smoother income flows, and such an income smoothing effect exists for both ceding and assuming firms. Further to prior studies, we find that internal reinsurance ceded exerts both direct and indirect effects on premiums growth in the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2007 and 2008. In addition to direct capacity support, the reduction in income volatility is another channel through which intragroup reinsurance enhances ceding firms' premiums growth. In the presence of market turmoil, the risk-sharing function can lower member firms' insolvency risk and thus enable them to pursue business growth.     

Disappearing internal capital markets: Evidence from diversified business groups in Korea

This paper examines how the onset of a financial crisis affects the operation of internal capital markets among firms within a diversified business group. We find that active internal capital markets within Korean business groups (chaebols) attenuate the financial constraints of the group-affiliated firms, allowing them to make efficient capital allocations during the early 1990s. However, these markets barely function after the financial crisis of 1997. Instead, we observe public debt markets serving as a substitute for internal capital markets. Our results suggest that chaebol firms’ coordinated attempts to achieve healthier financial structures in the wake of the crisis have taken place at the expense of investment efficiency.     

Managerial discretion and efficiency of internal capital markets

I use the staggered adoption of state-level antitakeover laws to provide causal evidence that managerial agency problems reduce the allocative efficiency of conglomerate firms. I find that increases in control slack following the passage of antitakeover laws reduces q-sensitivity of investment by 64%. The adverse impact of the laws appears mostly at conglomerate firms that benefited from disciplinary takeover threats prior to the passage of the laws, lacked alternative sources of pressure on management, or had the structural makings to fuel wasteful influence activities and power struggles among managers. These findings suggest that takeover threats impact the efficiency of resource allocation.     

Implied cost of capital investment strategies: evidence from international stock markets

Investors can generate excess returns by implementing trading strategies based on publicly available equity analyst forecasts. This paper captures the information provided by analysts by the implied cost of capital (ICC), the internal rate of return that equates a firm’s share price to the present value of analysts’ earnings forecasts. We find that U.S. stocks with a high ICC outperform low ICC stocks on average by 6.0 % per year. This spread is significant when controlling the investment returns for their risk exposure as proxied by standard pricing models. Further analysis across the world’s largest equity markets validates these results.     

The deep-pocket effect of internal capital markets

We provide evidence that incumbent and entrant firms' access to business group deep pockets affects the entry patterns in product markets. Relying on a unique French data set on business groups, our paper shows that entry into manufacturing industries is negatively related to the cash hoarded by incumbent affiliated groups and positively related to entrant groups' cash. In line with theoretical predictions, we find that the impact of group cash holdingson entry is more important in environments where financial constraints are pronounced. The cash holdings of incumbent and entrant groups also affect the survival rate of entrants in the three- to five-year post-entry window. Overall, our findings suggest that internal capital markets operate within corporate groups and affect the product market behavior of affiliated firms by mitigating financial constraints.     

A theory of socialistic internal capital markets

We develop a model of a two-division firm in which the “strong” division has, on average, higher quality investment opportunities than the “weak” division. We show that, in the presence of agency and information problems, optimal effort incentives are less powerful and thus managerial effort is lower in the strong division. This leads the firm to bias its project selection policy against the strong division. The selection bias is more severe when there is a larger spread in the average quality of investment opportunities between the two divisions.     

The relationship between capital structure and product markets: evidence from New Zealand

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the capital structure of New Zealand firms influences their product-market performance in the period from 1984 to 2008. Our main findings are that the use of leverage by publicly listed New Zealand companies leads to an increase in relative-to-industry sales growth, but a decrease in relative-to-industry return on assets (ROA). We also conduct a reverse causality test by examining whether sales growth and ROA influence leverage. We find no evidence that sales growth has an impact on the use of debt, but significant evidence that ROA is negatively correlated with its use. Our results suggest that New Zealand firms use debt to compete more aggressively in their product markets, even though this strategy comes at a cost of lower relative-to-industry profitability. A possible explanation for this behavior is the more competitive trading environment that has developed in New Zealand over the last 25 years.     

Internal capital markets and the partial adjustment of leverage

Prior literature provides support both for the existence of target capital structures and internal capital markets (ICM). The issue of whether firms use internal capital markets to reduce deviations from target capital structures, however, has yet to be examined. We provide the first empirical evidence of a link between deviations from target leverage and ICM activity. Based on data that allow us to trace intra-group capital market transactions for property–casualty insurers, our findings provide the first joint evidence that affiliated insurance companies have target leverage ratios and that ICM activity is used to manage deviations from target leverage.     

Internal capital markets and lending by multinational bank subsidiaries

We use new panel data on the intra-group ownership structure and the balance sheets of 45 of the largest multinational bank holdings to analyze what determines the credit growth of their subsidiaries. We find evidence for the existence of internal capital markets through which multinational banks manage the credit growth of their subsidiaries. Multinational bank subsidiaries with financially strong parent banks are able to expand their lending faster. As a result of parental support, foreign bank subsidiaries also do not need to rein in their credit supply during a financial crisis, while domestic banks need to do so.     

Financial markets,financial dependence,and the allocation of capital

We explore one specific channel through which finance promotes growth: the allocation of capital. Using international industrial data, we find that countries with developed financial markets invest more in growing industries, and pull out more funds of declining ones. Most interestingly, this pattern is more eminent for those industries more dependent on external financing. Various robustness checks show that the results are not driven by reverse causality, omitted variables, specific countries or industries.