Shareholder Votes and Proxy Advisors: Evidence from Say on Pay

We investigate the economic role of proxy advisors (PAs) in the context of mandatory “say on pay” votes, a novel and complex item requiring significant firm‐specific analysis. PAs are more likely to issue an Against recommendation at firms with poor performance and higher levels of CEO pay and do not appear to follow a “one‐size‐fits‐all” approach. PAs’ recommendations are the key determinant of voting outcome but the sensitivity of shareholder votes to these recommendations varies with the institutional ownership structure, and the rationale behind the recommendation, suggesting that at least some shareholders do not blindly follow these recommendations. More than half of the firms respond to the adverse shareholder vote triggered by a negative recommendation by engaging with investors and making changes to their compensation plan. However, we find no market reaction to the announcement of such changes, even when material enough to result in a favorable recommendation and vote the following year. Our findings suggest that, rather than identifying and promoting superior compensation practices, PAs' key economic role is processing a substantial amount of executive pay information on behalf of institutional investors, hence reducing their cost of making informed voting decisions. Our findings contribute to the literature on shareholder voting and the related policy debate.     

It Pays to Set the Menu: Mutual Fund Investment Options in 401(k) Plans

This paper investigates whether mutual fund families acting as service providers in 401(k) plans display favoritism toward their own affiliated funds. Using a hand‐collected data set on the menu of investment options offered to plan participants, we show that fund deletions and additions are less sensitive to prior performance for affiliated than unaffiliated funds. We find no evidence that plan participants undo this affiliation bias through their investment choices. Finally, we find that the subsequent performance of poorly performing affiliated funds indicates that this favoritism is not information driven.     

Location Decisions of Domestic and Foreign-Affiliated Financial Advisors: Australian Evidence

We examine two views of the location choice of newly qualified personal financial advisors that recommend fund managers to retail investors. In one, sources of investment pools are the determinants of the location choice of financial advisors (the ‘source of funds’ hypothesis). In the other, investment advisors learn from and mimic the location of competing industries (the ‘knowledge spill-over’ hypothesis). We also investigate whether ownership structures, such as institutional and foreign affiliation, affect the location choices of advisors. Overall, advisor location is determined by considerations for the profitability of an area as a source of both investment funds and potential information spillovers from competitors. Institutional affiliation may result in differences in the set of relevant location choice factors, but does not detract from our main findings.     

The Role and Impact of Financial Advisors in the Market for Municipal Bonds

Significantly more and more issuers of municipal bonds use the services of financial advisors during the bond issuance process. We investigate the benefits to issuers and market participants arising from the role of financial advisors in the issuance of municipal bonds. Using a large sample of 9,493 tax-exempt municipal bonds, we show that financial advisors have significant impact on borrowing costs, reoffering yields and underwriter gross spreads. Our results are more pronounced for revenue bonds, particularly for negotiated revenue issues. In addition, our results show significant advantages to using a financial advisor for refunding issues supporting the view that financial advisors play important roles for more complex issues. Our results are consistent with the interpretation that financial advisors provide important and useful services resulting in monitoring and information asymmetry reduction benefits accruing to issuers and market participants.      

国际银行业并购对全球金融业的影响和启示

一、国际银行并购浪潮此起彼伏、经久不衰的主要原因 (一)外部环境因素 1、经济全球化的形成及国际市场的整合,极大地推动了银行业的并购 并购作为最快捷的手段,使得本土银行得以发展成为全球性银行,并且可能使本土银行更快捷地学习和掌握新的金融产品,从而为客户提供全球服务.     

Financial Development and Financing Constraints: International Evidence from the Structural Investment Model

This article provides evidence that financial development impactsgrowth by reducing financing constraints that would otherwisedistort efficient allocation of investment. The financing constraintsare inferred from the investment Euler equation by assumingthat the firm's stochastic discount factor is a function ofthe firm's financial position (specifically, the stock of liquidassets). The magnitude of the changes in the cost of capitalis twice as large in a country with a low level of financialdevelopment as in a country with an average level of financialdevelopment. The size effect, business cycles, and legal environmenteffects are also considered.     

Bank Loan Supply in the Financial Crisis: Evidence from the Role of Political Connection

We investigate the changes in bank loan supply during the 2007–2008 financial crisis, with particular focus on the influence of political connections. We demonstrate that although political connections can help firms obtain lower loan rates during the precrisis period, such benefits disappear in the postcrisis period. Moreover, the loan acceptance ratio for politically connected firms is enhanced in the postcrisis period, especially for the politically connected firms with high risks. Evidence reveals that the focus of the benefits for politically connected firms is more likely to shift from the loan rate to the loan acceptance ratio during the postcrisis period.     

Where M&A Pays and Where It Strays: A Survey of the Research

This article uses a large and growing body of academic studies to refute the popular notion that corporate mergers and acquisitions generally fail to increase productivity and end up reducing shareholder value. A careful review of the evidence starts by con. rming the obvious–namely, that the shareholders of selling firms earn large returns from M&A–and goes on to demonstrate an economic reality that is not widely understood: shareholders of acquirers generally earn about the required rate of return on investment, and hence M&A is at least a value-maintaining proposition.
Of greatest interest to corporate practitioners, however, is the very large dispersion of outcomes that underlies the average returns. Closer inspection of this variability shows that certain circumstances and company characteristics are reliably associated with value-increasing M&A. In particular, acquisitions of related companies tend to be better received by the market and to produce higher post-merger operating returns than diversifying transactions (though there are a number of successful instances of the latter). Other fairly reliable indicators of value-increasing M&A are transactions involving mergers of equals or smaller, private targets (where the bidding competition is less intense) and deals structured as earnouts and financed primarily with cash rather than stock.     

Impact of Trade Credit on Firm Inventory Investment During Financial Crises: Evidence from Latin America

This paper studies whether trade credit is used as a substitute for bank credit in crisis periods in Latin America. The sample is composed of firms listed on the Argentine, Brazilian, and Mexican stock exchanges from 1994 to 2009. For the small firms, the substitution hypothesis was not rejected. However, this hypothesis was not confirmed homogeneously for all the firms during the crises. Unlike Brazilian and Argentine firms, Mexican firms use more cash reserves than trade credit. The big firms tend to use other financing sources. A pattern of trade credit use by sector has not yet been found.     

Empirical Evidence on the Role of Trading Suspensions in Disseminating New Information to the Capital Market

Abstract:  This paper examines the effect of temporarily suspending the trading of exchange-listed individual stocks. We evaluate whether regulatory authorities can successfully use the mechanism of trading suspension in forcing companies to disclose new and material information to the capital market. Previous studies on trading suspensions mainly concentrate on North-American stock markets and find conflicting results. This study utilizes a new data set comprising of firms listed on Euronext Brussels – an important segment of Europe's leading cross-border exchange. Our results show that suspension is indeed an effective means of disseminating new information. Stock prices adjust completely and instantaneously to the new information released during trading suspensions. We also observe a significant increase in trading volume with the reinstatement of trading. On the other hand, we do not find support for the claim that trading suspensions increase the volatility of stock prices. Overall, our results show the efficacy of trading suspensions in disseminating new information.     

When Financial Institutions Are Large Shareholders: The Role of Macro Corporate Governance Environments

While financial institutions' aggregate investments have grown substantially worldwide, the size of their individual shareholdings, and ultimately their incentive to monitor, may be limited by the free‐rider problem, regulations, and a preference for diversification and liquidity. We compare institutions' shareholding patterns across countries and find vast differences in the extent to which they are large shareholders. These variations are largely determined by macro corporate governance factors such as shareholder protection, law enforcement, and corporate disclosure requirements. This suggests that strong governance environments act to strengthen monitoring ability such that more institutions are encouraged to hold concentrated equity positions.     

The Role of Internal Capital Markets in Financial Intermediaries: Evidence From Insurer Groups

We exploit the transparency of internal capital markets (ICMs) within insurance groups to investigate the activity and efficiency of ICMs within insurance groups. Specifically, we compare the relationship between internal capital transfers and investment to that between capital from other sources and investment. The ability to track the actual ICM transactions allows for more direct analysis of ICM activity than most previous studies. Consistent with theory, we find evidence that ICMs play a significant role in the investment behavior of affiliated insurers. We then use these detailed data to execute a more direct test of ICM efficiency than currently exists in the literature. Consistent with ICM efficiency, results suggest that capital is allocated to subsidiaries with the best expected performance.     

财务分析师盈利预测的投资价值:来自深沪A股市场的证据

本文研究了中国股票市场上财务分析师的盈利预测信息对投资者是否有价值。我们发现,可以利用公开的盈利预测制定可获利的套头交易策略。套头交易的回报率不仅在统计意义上显著大于零,而且在经济意义上也是显著的。这些结果不受不同的检验方法影响,也无法为我们所考虑到的风险因素所解释。本文的发现说明了中国的股票市场尚未达到Fama(1970)意义上的半强式有效,投资者在投资决策时可以利用分析师的盈利预测以提高其投资的回报。此外,本文的结果也有助于回答中国的财务分析师是否具有专业胜任能力这一颇有争议的问题。     

Financial Innovation and Information: The Role of Derivatives When a Market for Information Exists

We study the effects of financial innovation in a model of endogenousinformation acquisition. We determine the conditions under whichthe introduction of a derivative written on an existing stockincreases or decreases the incentive to purchase information.We show that financial innovation produces some effects whichhold across informational structures and others which differ.The former coincide with the few empirical results that arerobust in the literature (effects on prices, risk premia, andvolatility), while the latter coincide with the ones that differexperiment by experiment (effects on volume, correlation betweenvolume and volatility, and market informational efficiency).     

外资参与、融资约束与企业生存——来自中国微观企业的证据

生存问题是企业面临的头等重要大事。本文采用1999-2007年期间新成立的非国有企业样本数据刻画了中国企业的生存时间。数据显示非外资参与企业相对于外资参与企业具有较低的生存率。通过使用COX比例风险回归模型发现外资参与确实可以有效缓解企业的融资约束,从而降低企业的失败风险。相比利用外资带来融资约束缓解效应而言,加快金融市场改革、消除基于所有制性质的信贷歧视才是真正缓解民营企业融资约束,进而提升中国企业竞争力的切实有效的路径。     

发挥好经济规律作用 抗击疫情促“六稳"

2月3日,中共中央政治局常务委员会召开会议,研究加强新型冠状病毒感染的肺炎疫情防控工作。会议指出,要密切监测经济运行状况,聚焦疫情对经济运行带来的冲击和影响,围绕做好"六稳"工作,做好应对各种复杂困难局面的准备。在防控疫情阻击战的关键时刻强调做好"六稳"工作,具有很强的前瞻性和指导性。     

The Role of Acquisitions in Foreign Direct Investment: Evidence from the U.S. Stock Market

This paper examines foreign direct investment by studying shareholder wealth gains for 1273 U.S. firms acquired during the period 1970-1987. Three findings stand out. First, cross-border takeovers are more frequent in research and development intensive industries than are domestic acquisitions; furthermore, in three-fourths of cross-border transactions the buyer and seller are in related industries. These industry patterns suggest that costs and imperfections in product markets play an important role in foreign direct investment. Second, targets of foreign buyers have significantly higher wealth gains than do targets of U.S. firms. This cross-border effect is comparable in size to the wealth effects of all-cash and multiple bids, two effects receiving substantial attention in the finance literature, and is robust to inclusion of these two variables. Third, while the cross-border effect on wealth gains is not well explained by industry and tax variables, it is positively related to the weakness of the U.S. dollar, indicating a significant role for exchange rate movements in foreign direct investment.     

新一轮税制改革:可在积极财政政策中谋得一席之地

税制发展史告诉我们,任何一个国家的税收制度,总要植根于一定的经济社会环境并随着经济社会环境的变化而做相应调整.在1993年设计并于次年开始实施的中国现行税制,至今已经有了10年的历史.     

Trading Is Hazardous to Your Wealth: The Common Stock Investment Performance of Individual Investors

Individual investors who hold common stocks directly pay a tremendous performance penalty for active trading. Of 66,465 households with accounts at a large discount broker during 1991 to 1996, those that trade most earn an annual return of 11.4 percent, while the market returns 17.9 percent. The average household earns an annual return of 16.4 percent, tilts its common stock investment toward high-beta, small, value stocks, and turns over 75 percent of its portfolio annually. Overconfidence can explain high trading levels and the resulting poor performance of individual investors. Our central message is that trading is hazardous to your wealth.