Corporate Pyramids,Conservatism and Cost of Debt: Evidence From Taiwan

This study investigates the extent to which the span of corporate pyramids (as measured by the number of ownership layers) is associated with higher agency costs of debt, and whether conservatism can moderate the agency cost. Consistent with corporate pyramids generating higher agency costs and information asymmetries between corporate insiders and outside creditors, we find a positive association between the number of investment layers and cost of debt. However, we also find that multi-layered firms mitigate organizational opaqueness through increased financial reporting conservatism, which results in lower cost of debt capital. These findings provide new insights into the relationship between organizational structure and financial reporting quality.     

Morgan Stanley Perspectives on Sustainable Investing: Acceleration and Integration

The CEO of Morgan Stanley's Institute for Sustainable Investing discusses recent developments in the field since the founding of the Institute three years ago. The position of the Institute, which works across Morgan Stanley businesses as well as with external partners, provides a unique vantage point for assessing both the company's and the financial industry's progress in advancing the goals of sustainability. Since its inception, the Institute has focused on measuring investor interest and highlighting the performance realities of sustainable investing strategies, with the ultimate goal of helping to increase the adoption of such strategies by not only Morgan Stanley's clients, but throughout the industry. Drawing on its own survey data and on the research and views of the Institute's internal and external collaborators, the author describes not only the acceleration of investor interest and the emergence of new players, but also the progressive integration of sustainability with more traditional methods as ESG issues move from being peripheral to “material” and “strategic” considerations. Such integration is helping to ensure that sustainability concerns—and corporate efforts to deal with them—will prove more than just a temporary trend and assume a prominent, and permanent, position in the dialogue between companies and investors.     

Book-tax differences,CEO overconfidence,and bank loan contracting

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - We assess information embedded in the difference between the reported book income and the taxable income (the book-tax difference, BTD hereafter)...