Controlling shareholder share pledging and the cost of equity capital: Evidence from China

We propose and test the incentive view—that the margin call pressure and ownership-control discrepancy associated with insider share pledging increase investors’ perceived risk, and thus also the cost of equity capital, in an emerging market. Using a controlling shareholder share pledging sample for Chinese listed firms, we find that firms with share pledging have a cost of equity capital that is 23.7 basis points higher than firms without share pledging. Further, share pledging increases the cost of equity capital through the information risks and agency conflicts channels. Cross-sectional analyses show that share pledging has a stronger effect on the cost of equity capital in non-state-owned enterprises, firms without monitoring of multiple large shareholders, firms with controlling shareholders assuming the position of chairperson, and firms with a weak institutional environment. In addition, using the global financial crisis and the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) as quasi-natural experiments, we disentangle the potential confounding effect of firm fundamentals and show that share pledging is positively associated with the cost of equity capital. Overall, the results are consistent with our incentive view that share pledging increases the cost of equity capital in an emerging market.     

Shareholder litigation and toxic releases

We examine the environmental impact of the staggered adoption of universal demand laws by 23 U.S. states between 1989 and 2005. Universal demand laws impede derivative lawsuits and thus undermine shareholder oversight of corporate environmental performance. We find that weakened litigation rights for shareholders are positively associated with the release of toxic chemicals by firms. The effect is stronger for firms with weak governance, and environmental mismanagement by firms after the passage of the laws lead to poorer financial performance. Overall, our findings imply that derivative lawsuits by shareholders are not frivolous, as is often asserted. Rather, they act as an effective mechanism of corporate governance.     

非国有股东超额委派董事与企业现金持有

基于持股权与控制权非对等配置逻辑，文章以2009—2019年A股国有上市企业为研究主体，实证检验非国有股东超额委派董事对企业现金持有水平的影响。研究发现，非国有股东超额委派董事显著提高参股国企的现金持有水平，且随着超额委派比例增加更加显著；进一步地，该正向作用在中央层级企业及市场化进程较高地区表现更为显著；明晰其作用机理，发现其通过抑制超额持现所致的过度投资行为、迫使无效耗散的现金尽快回流进而提高持现水平；此外，非国有股东超额委派董事和超额委派比例均有助于优化现金二次配置，促使企业将超额现金用于发放现金股利及进行创新投入，并最终提升现金持有价值和企业价值。文章结论不仅印证和延伸混改推进过程中非国有资本在高层治理维度所发挥的积极作用，更为进一步深化混合所有制改革及完善中小股东保护体系提供借鉴。     

Litigating crashes? Insights from security class actions

Investors tend to litigate large stock price declines, i.e., file ‘stock-drop lawsuits’. However, it is less clear whether the ex-ante threat of security class actions can deter stock price crashes in the first place. To answer this question, we exploit the 1999 ruling of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that discourages security class actions as a quasi-exogenous shock, and find that reducing the threat of security class actions leads to a significant increase in stock price crash risk measured by negative skewness of stock returns. We reveal that the main effect is partially driven by a reduction in the timeliness of bad news disclosure and worsened earnings quality, which is consistent with the view that bad news hoarding serves as the key factor in the formation of a stock price crash. Our overall findings highlight the importance of security class actions in deterring the occurrence of firm-level negative tail events on the financial market.