Market Reactions to Corporate Governance Ranking Announcements: Evidence from Taiwan

Abstract

This study examines whether market participants react to the announcements of corporate governance ranking exercises. As a regulatory innovation, the Financial Supervisory Commission in Taiwan initiated and administered two ranking exercises, one in 2015 and the other in 2016, on all publicly listed companies. Adopting anchoring‐and‐adjustment theory, the study predicts that market participants will react strongly to the second announcement if the ranking obtained in the second exercise turns out to be better than the ranking in the first round. Employing an event study methodology, the study shows that market participants react positively and significantly to firms ranked in the top 50% in the second corporate governance exercise. Their reactions to the announcement are even stronger among those that did not list in the top 20% in the first exercise, but made it into the top 50% in the second one. Overall, our analyses support that anchoring‐and‐adjustment theory effectively explains market participants’ behaviour. Since the monitoring of the board of directors and investors may not effectively mitigate the potential moral hazard committed by family owners/executives, our empirical evidence demonstrates that a ranking exercise probably can be employed to supplement routine corporate governance disclosures made in annual reports, in order to strengthen the check‐and‐balance mechanism and reduce the risk of principal–principal conflicts. In conclusion, we discuss the implications of the research findings and propose directions for future studies.