The internationalization of an Arab bank: The case of Ahli United Bank of Bahrain

Ahli United Bank of Bahrain (AUB) has “leapfrogged” over early stages of internationalization by means of multiple rapid acquisitions of competitors. Use of this high‐cost, high‐risk strategy is well known among companies with the resources to invest in international expansion, but its application has not yet been studied in depth among companies based in the Middle East. This theory‐driven case study examines the growth record of AUB, its place in the regional banking industry in the Gulf, and its successful internationalization as an Arab bank. The article concludes with a detailed assessment of managerial and theoretical implications arising from the case study, and proposes further research to understand better the process of internationalization by companies expanding from a base in the Middle East. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Foreign capital inflows, economic growth and stock market capitalization in Asian countries: an ARDL bound testing approach

This study investigates the effects of foreign capital inflows and economic growth on stock market capitalization in 18 Asian countries by using the panel data from the period of 2000–2010. The ARDL bound testing cointegration approach confirms the valid long run relationship between the considered variables. Results indicate that foreign direct investment has significant negative and economic growth has significant positive relationship with the stock market capitalization, whereas, the results of workers’ remittances is found insignificant in long run. The error correction model confirms the significant positive relationship of economic growth and workers’ remittances while, FDI has negative and significant impact on stock market capitalization in short run. Results of causality test based on Toda and Yamamoto (J Econom 66: 225–250, 1995) show the bidirectional causal relationship of foreign direct investment and economic growth with stock market capitalization. However, no causal relationship is found in between workers’ remittances and stock market capitalization. It is suggested that investor should not idealize the inflow of workers’ remittances to invest in Asian stock markets in long run. Simultaneously, size of the economy is a better leading indicator for Asian stock markets. On the other hand, inflows of FDI may mislead the investor to invest. Investor should keep on eye whether FDI come in the competition of domestic market or not? If this happens so investor should not invest in the stock market of host country.     

Target's organisational form and returns to Australian bidders in cross‐border acquisitions

We present large sample evidence on return performances of Australian acquirers who bid for public and private targets in cross‐border acquisitions. While placing a particular emphasis on the method of payment and the shareholder protection offered by the target country, we analyse the impact of various bid, firm and foreign‐acquisition‐specific characteristics on bidding firms' abnormal returns. We find that Australian investors perceive cross‐border acquisitions as value‐creating exercises regardless of the organisational form of the target acquired. However, bidders for private targets earn higher return when the method of payment is stock and the targets are located in high investor protection countries. We further find that the abnormal returns are conditional to the relative size of the target, bid frequency, target country destination and the preacquisition financial performance of bidding firms.     

Gendered work engagement: qualitative insights from Jordan

Abstract

Work engagement is assumed, implicitly, to be gender-neutral where women and men have equal opportunities to demonstrate their engagement in the workplace. This paper questions this assumption and integrates gender into the notion of work engagement by investigating and contextualising the factors that affect the genderedness of work engagement. It uses gendered organisation theory and engagement theory to expose the gendered nature of work engagement. Interviewing thirty-six employees from three telecommunication companies in Jordan, it is found that the notion of work engagement is neither gender neutral nor universal, and that the presence of inequality regimes means that women may have less opportunity to experience engagement, and certainly the opportunity will vary across contexts.     

Asymmetric impacts of disaggregated oil price shocks on uncertainties and investor sentiment

This paper aims to examine short- and long-run asymmetries in the impacts of disaggregated oil price shocks on economic policy uncertainty, stock market uncertainty, treasury rates, and investor (bullish and bearish) sentiment in the US. To this end, we use a nonlinear auto-regressive distributed lag cointegration approach, which allows us to capture both positive and negative disaggregated oil shocks. We find that oil demand shocks are the main drivers of both measures of uncertainty, while oil supply shocks affect treasury rates. However, both oil demand shocks and oil supply shocks affect investor sentiment, with certain differences in the effects of positive and negative shocks. The overall effects of both oil demand and supply shocks—whether positive or negative—are stronger in the long-run than in the short-run. Additionally, we apply rolling causality and reveal evidence of a rather homogenous causal flow from disaggregated oil shocks to the variables studied, particularly around global stress periods. Our findings have implications for asset pricing and portfolio risk management and suggest policy formulations that differentiate between disaggregated positive and negative oil price shocks.

     

The impact of oil prices and the financial market on cost efficiency in the insurance and Takaful sectors: Evidence from a stochastic frontier analysis

The Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC) insurance industry, including conventional insurance and Takaful, has witnessed remarkable growth during the last decade. However, the economies of this region rely on oil as the primary stream of revenue and lack development in financial markets. This could affect the insurance industry. For this reason, this paper examines the impact of oil prices and the financial market on the cost efficiency of the insurance and Takaful sectors in GCC countries using a stochastic frontier cost function with data from 2009–2016. The results show that the relationship between oil prices and efficiency changes from positive to negative when the prices increase, whereas the relationship between the financial market and efficiency is negative. No clear evidence of the impact of oil prices on efficiency arises from the differences between conventional insurance and Takaful. However, there are differences regarding the financial market, with a negative impact on conventional insurance and a positive one on the Takaful business. The results of this study have implications for regulators and management. The Takaful industry is rapidly growing compared to conventional insurance in the GCC and, therefore, the financial market may have added benefits for the GCC region. However, caution is required in relation to the impact of the financial market on conventional insurance. Furthermore, management may require the development of strategies to deal with the nature of GCC economies to avoid shocks to oil prices.     

The status quo of omani female entrepreneurs: a story of multidimensional success factors

Quality & Quantity - While the Omani government’s endeavours over two decades to support entrepreneurship, particularly among women, have been significant, research has not substantiated...     

Quality Differentiation Under Mixed Competition in Hospital Markets

We use a Hotelling-type model of two hospitals, one for-profit (FP) and the other not-for-profit (NFP) using quality to compete for patients. In an equilibrium that constrains the NFP to zero profits, the NFP share of the market decreases as fixed costs or patient’s marginal utility of quality increase, or as transportation and marginal quality costs decrease, conditions that make quality a more effective tool for attracting patients, improving the ability of the FP to compete for market share. We show that an NFP hospital cannot take the entire market without significant fundraising ability. The market shares predicted by our model are consistent with what is presently observed in Europe and the US.     

Industry-level determinants of the linkage between credit and stock markets

This paper examines the relationship between US credit default swaps (CDS) and stock returns on an industry-wide basis across a number of investment horizons, with particular focus on the major determinants of such a relationship. Wavelet analysis is first applied to extract the CDS–stock wavelet correlation for each US industry. Then, Bayesian Model Averaging is employed to identify the key driving factors of the industry CDS–stock wavelet correlations at short- and long-term horizons. The empirical results indicate that the wavelet correlations between the industry CDS and stock returns are primarily negative over time and across time scales. Moreover, the CDS–stock correlation at longer horizons exhibits a much more stable pattern than its counterpart at shorter time frames. The results also demonstrate that the volatility of US Treasury and stock markets, as measured by the MOVE and VIX indices, respectively, the volatility of volatility, as captured by the VVIX index, and US economic policy uncertainty, as measured by the EPU index, are the most robust determinants of the correlation between CDS and stock returns at shorter and longer horizons for most US industries. In contrast, the Fama–French systematic equity factors exhibit a practically negligible explanatory power on the CDS–stock link.