Exchange-listed Firms Research Articles

The Diminishing Benefits of U.S. Cross-Listing: Economic Consequences of SEC Rule 12h-6

On Mar. 21, 2007, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) passed Exchange Act Rule 12h-6 to make it easier for cross-listed firms to deregister from the U.S. market and escape its regulatory costs. Using difference-in-difference (DD) tests, we find that, on average, Rule 12h-6’s passage induced an increase in voting premium, a decline in equity raising, and a decline in cross-listing premium. These effects are observed for exchange-listed firms and for firms from countries with weak investor protection. We conclude that although cross-listed firms are still valued at a significant premium over non-cross-listed firms, the rule decreased the value of commitment to the U.S. regulatory system.

Corporate governance and executive perquisites

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the relation between executive perquisite consumption and indicators of corporate governance after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) expanded the disclosure requirements related to perquisites.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses ordinary least squares and Tobit regressions to examine the dollar value of perquisites consumed, the number of perquisites consumed and the types of perquisites consumed.FindingsThe analysis shows that firms with weak corporate governance are more likely to award perquisites to executives. Firms characterized as being more prone to the presence of agency problems are associated with greater levels of perquisite consumption. Finally, there is evidence that not all perquisite consumptions can be attributed to an agency problem. Efficiently operating firms are associated with greater levels of perquisite consumption as are larger firms.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors examine firms in the period immediately after the SEC initiated the expanded disclosures. This may limit the generalizability of the results to other exchange-listed firms that changed their perquisite policy as a result of the rule change.Originality/valueThe paper extends the literature on corporate governance and mandatory corporate disclosure by investigating the association between corporate governance characteristics and perquisite consumption. This paper examines this relation immediately after the SEC expanded the disclosures surrounding perquisites to provide the public with more transparent disclosures.

Default Correlations and Large-Portfolio Credit Analysis

A factor model with sparsely correlated residuals is used to model short-term probabilities of default and other corporate exits while permitting missing data, and serves as the basis for generating default correlations. This novel factor model can then be used to produce portfolio credit risk profiles (default-rate and portfolio-loss distributions) by complementing an existing credit portfolio aggregation method with a novel simulation–convolution algorithm. We apply the model and the portfolio aggregation method on a global sample of 40,560 exchange-listed firms and focus on three large portfolios (the U.S., Eurozone-12, and ASEAN-5). Our results reaffirm the critical importance of default correlations. With default correlations, both default-rate and portfolio-loss distributions become far more right-skewed, reflecting a much higher likelihood of defaulting together. Our results also reveal that portfolio credit risk profiles evaluated at two different time points can change drastically with moving economic conditions, suggesting the importance of modeling credit risks with a dynamic system. Our factor model coupled with the aggregation algorithm provides a useful tool for active credit portfolio management.

The role of audit quality in firm valuation

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of audit quality on the value relevance of earnings and book value. Because joint audit is mandated for all Kuwait Stock Exchange-listed firms, it is hypothesized that the higher the quality of the audit team (as measured by the number of Big 4 audit firms in the joint audit team), the higher the value relevance of earnings and book values for equity valuation. Design/methodology/approach Consistent with prior research, the value relevance of earnings and book value is measured by the adjusted R2 derived from the Ohlson’s 1995 regression model. The number of Big 4 audit firms represented on the firm’s audit team is used as a proxy for audit quality. Three tiers of audit quality exist, namely, two non-Big 4 audit firms, one Big 4 and one non-Big 4 audit firms or two Big 4 audit firms. To address this paper’s objective, the association between audit quality and the value relevance of earnings and book value were examined using four approaches. The final sample consists of 1,836 firm-year observations and covers fiscal years from a 12-year period (2002-2013). Findings Taken together, the four approaches used collectively provide empirical evidence that audit quality positively and significantly affects the value relevance of accounting measures to market participants. Importantly, the results reveal significant variations in the value relevance of earnings and book value jointly across the three possible auditor combinations. Research limitations/implications Although using auditor size as a proxy for audit quality is well established in the auditing literature, a limitation of that proxy is that it measures audit quality dichotomously, which implicitly assumes a homogeneous level of audit quality within each group. Practical implications The findings show the importance of high-quality and rigorous external audits in improving the value relevance of accounting information. Originality/value This study contributes to the extent literature on audit quality by exploring the role of audit quality in a unique institutional setting that imposes mandatory joint audits. Although prior studies have investigated the effect of joint audit pair choice on earnings management and audit fee premium, this study is the first to investigate the effect of joint audit pair choice on the value relevance of accounting information.

Transparency, corporate governance and firm performance in The Netherlands

We explore the relations between transparency, corporate governance, and performance for Dutch exchange-listed firms over 1997-2007. Our measure for transparency is based on annual report information. In 2005 a new accounting standard (IFRS) became mandatory and applicable to the annual reports of Dutch listed firms. We investigate the effects of IFRS by comparing pre and post IFRS periods. We find that under IFRS transparency has increased substantially, and that the determinants of transparency have also changed. Pre-IFRS, disclosure is mainly driven by firm size, leverage and protective preference shares. Post-IFRS, we observe very little variation in disclosure practices.

Gender differences in compensation and earnings management: Evidence from Australian CFOs

We investigate the impact of CFO gender on CFO compensation and earnings management in Australia. In a sample of exchange-listed firms from 2006 to 2010, we find a significant gender pay gap in CFO compensation but much of this pay gap dissipates when female CFOs are matched using a propensity scoring method. Female CFOs tend to choose less risky remuneration packages with more cash and less non-cash component, with more salary and less bonus than their male peers. In addition, female CFOs are more conservative and deliver higher reporting quality compared to male CFOs. They engage substantially less in both accruals-based and real-based earnings management than their male counterparts. The difference in behavior of earnings management and in the selected compensation structures between male and female CFOs can be possibly explained by the gender-based difference in personal risk preference.

The effect of ownership structure on dividend policy: evidence from Turkey

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate the impact of ownership structure on dividend policy of listed firms in Turkey. Particularly, it attempts to uncover the effects of family involvement (through ownership and board representation), non-family blockholders (foreign investors, domestic financial institutions and the state) and minority shareholders on dividend decisions in the post-2003 period as it witnesses the major economic and structural reforms.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses alternative dividend policy measures (the probability of paying dividends, dividend payout ratio and dividend yield) and uses appropriate regression techniques (logit and tobit models) to test the research hypotheses, by focusing on a recent large panel dataset of 264 Istanbul Stock Exchange-listed firms (non-financial and non-utility) over a 10-year period 2003-2012.FindingsThe empirical results show that foreign and state ownership are associated with a less likelihood of paying dividends, while other ownership variables (family involvement, domestic financial institutions and minority shareholders) are insignificant in affecting the probability of paying dividends. However, all the ownership variables have a significantly negative impact on dividend payout ratio and dividend yield. Hence, the paper presents consistent evidence that increasing ownership of foreign investors and the state in general reduces the need for paying dividends in the Turkish market.Research limitations/implicationsBecause of the absence of empirical research on how ownership structure may affect dividend policy and the data unavailability for earlier periods in Turkey, the paper cannot make comparison between the pre-and post-2003 periods. Nevertheless, this paper can be a valuable benchmark for further research.Practical implicationsThe paper reveals that cash dividends are not used as a monitoring mechanism by investors in Turkey and the expropriation argument through dividends for Turkish families is relatively weak. Accordingly, the findings of this paper may benefit policymakers, investors and fellow researchers, who seek useful guidance from relevant literature.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to examine the link between ownership structure and dividend policy in Turkey after the implementation of major reforms in 2003.

Examining the Impact of Institutional Ownership on Monitoring Cost: The Case of Iranian Firms Listed on Tehran Stock Exchange

Nowadays, in large corporations, owing to the vast number of owners and shareholders, the direct control by owners over firm performance is impossible and this group can only participate in the results of operations. Therefore, it is reasonable that they come to protect their interests and optimally control behavior of employed managers via establishing appropriate monitoring mechanisms. The main objective of this research is to investigate effect of institutional owners on monitoring costs. Based on this objective, a sample of 84 Tehran stock exchange-listed firms over the period 2006-2012 is analyzed statistically. In order to extract a robust model, Pearson correlation coefficient and multivariate regression are used and to test significance of regression model and coefficients, F-test and T- test are utilized respectively. Moreover, the monitoring cost is considered the sum of audit fees and executive compensation in current research. The findings indicated that there is a significantly positive relationship between institutional ownership and monitoring cost. The results also revealed that institutional ownership is significantly and positively associated to audit fees and executive compensation.

Information asymmetry and monitoring in equity private placements

Abstract This paper systematically examines the factors that determine price discounts and announcement effects of equity private placements conducted by firms in Taiwan from 2002 to 2008. Different with most studies of private placements using available observations as a whole sample, our study separates the whole sample into subsamples by exchange-listed firms and OTC firms. The results for OTC firms corroborate the information hypothesis; the discounts serve as compensation for investor's costs of assessing firms, while abnormal returns reflect the information about firm quality. On the other hand, the empirical results show that some of our findings support an information explanation and some support a monitoring explanation in the case of exchange-listed firms. It seems that there are different motives behind the exchange-listed firms placing equity privately.

RISIKO KEBANGKRUTAN, PROPORSI HUTANG DAN FENOMENA UNDERPRICINGPADA IPO: STUDI EMPIRIS DI BURSA EFEK INDONESIA

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of bankruptcy risk and debt proportion to undepricing phenomenon in Initial Public Offering. This study analyzes a sample of initial public offfering made of indonesian stock exchange-listed non finance firms over the periode 2001-2010. Date analysis uses multiple regression model. The results show that debt proportion have negative effect on underpricing, while bankruptcy risk shows no such effect. This result consistent with signaling equilibrium phenomenom.Keyswords: underpricing, debt, and bankruptcy risk.

TINGKAT VARIASI GENDER POSISI MANAJEMEN PUNCAK DAN KUALITAS LABA PERUSAHAAN

The purpose of this study is to analyze the relation of top management gender with earnings management. This study analyzes a sample made of Jakarta stock exchange-listed firms. Three models used in this study, first model to measure the gender variation, i.e. content analysis; the second model to analyze the earnings managemet, with regression analysis; and the third model to examine the relation of top management gender variation with earnings management, with corelation analysis. The result show that top management gender variation is not correlated with earnings management. Keywords: top management gender, earnings management

Change of control and the success of China's share-issue privatization

Abstract Using two newly available datasets of exchange-listed firms in China covering the period from 1994 to 2003, we test if share-issue privatization, defined here as a change of corporate control from the State to private owners rather than the IPO event used in earlier studies, improved firm performance. Our econometric analysis shows that privatization, when accompanied by a change of control, has had positive effects on profitability and the productivity of labor that are both statistically and economically significant.

Cost of Capital Effects and Changes in Growth Expectations around U.S. Cross-Listings

This paper examines whether cross-listing in the U.S. reduces foreign firms' costs of capital. While prior studies show that U.S. cross-listings are associated with substantial increases in firm value, the sources of these valuation effects are not well understood. We estimate cost of capital effects implied by market prices and analyst forecasts, which accounts for changes in growth expectations around cross-listings. We find strong evidence that firms with cross-listings on U.S. exchanges experience a significant decrease in their cost of capital between 70 to 120 basis points. These effects are sustained and still present after the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Consistent with the bonding hypothesis, we find smaller cost of capital reductions for firms that cross-list in the over-the-counter market and for exchange-listed firms from countries with stronger home-country institutions. For exchange-traded cross-listings, the reduction in cost of capital accounts for more than half of the increase in value around cross-listings, whereas for the other types of cross-listings the valuation effects are primarily attributable to contemporaneous revisions in growth expectations.

The empirical relationship between ownership characteristics and audit fees

The present study examines the empirical relationship between ownership characteristics and audit fees. The basic premise is that the level of ownership sophistication and the extent to which ownership is large and substantial impact the effectiveness of stockholder monitoring on corporate affairs including the financial reporting process. Furthermore, high managerial ownership firms may experience a decline in agency problems in financial reporting due to a decrease in managerial propensity to misreport financial results. By employing a cross-sectional least squares regression analysis for a sample of 358 New York Stock Exchange-listed firms audited by the Big Five auditors, we find evidence of a significantly positive relationship between diffused institutional stock ownership (i.e., having less than 5% individual shareholding) and audit fees, and a significantly negative relationship between institutional blockholder ownership (i.e., having 5% or more individual shareholding) and audit fees. Finally, we document that managerial stock ownership is negatively associated with audit fees. We do not, however, find evidence of any relationship between noninstitutional blockholder ownership (with at least 5% individual stock ownership) and audit fees. The study's main results hold in various specification tests including when the effects of board-related and audit committee variables are factored in the analysis. Based on the observed relationship between the ownership variables and audit fees, we suggest that the ownership characteristics of a firm as a part of its governance mechanism constitute an important determinant of audit fees.

Excess Return and Risk Characteristics of Asian Exchange Listed Real Estate

This study examines the behavior of the excess returns of publicly-listed real estate firms whose shares are traded in Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, and Thailand in widely-varying market situations. The results indicate that the publicly-traded stocks of real estate firms in these markets, apart from Taiwan, do not exhibit excess return behavior. In addition, with the exception of South Korea, the risk characteristics of exchange-listed real estate firms are found to vary with differences in market conditions. We also demonstrate that there was no structural shift in return behavior around the Asian crisis.

Ownership structure and expropriation in stock exchange listed firms

This paper analyses firms’ ownership structure and corporate governance in seven countries, with an emphasis on stock exchange listed firms. This focus is, in our view, important because these firms are more representative of the economies of countries included in our sample. Our results indicate that in Canada, Europe and East-Asia, ownership structure is highly concentrated. Most of the firms are controlled by at least one large shareholder who reinforces his or her control with devices such as multiple voting right shares, pyramidal structures, cross ownership, and reciprocal holding. In the U.S., firms’ ownership structure is more diffuse. The use of means to separate ownership from control is less present and the control of the large shareholder is lower than in the other sample countries. Being listed on the stock exchange can explain the firm’s ownership structure. Exchange-listed firms, which are generally larger in size than unlisted firms, tend to have more diffused ownership. Further, the legal system hypothesis formulated by La Porta, Lopez-De-Silanes, Shleifer & Vishny (1998) does not hold for the countries we analysed

The Determinants of Borrowing by Newly Exchange-listed Firms in Romania: When Adverse Selection Meets Cronyism

Analysis of 580 Romanian firms listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange and RASDAQ during 1997 and 1998 reveals that corporate borrowing was influenced by budget constraints, adverse selection and ownership structure. These exchange-listed corporations carried a very low level of short-term debt, were relatively profitable, paid very little dividend and relied mostly on internal capital. The negative relationship between financing needs and new borrowing suggests that severe adverse selection might have played a significant role here. Firms owned by Romanian nationals appeared to have easier access to credit than those owned by foreign investors, management or employees or other Romanian institutional investors: this finding testifies to political cronyism.

Does Cross-Listing in the U.S. Cause Value?

More highly valued firms self-select to cross-list in the U.S. In connection, firms that are cross-listed in the U.S are worth more than non-cross-listed firms. Consequently, we endeavour to separate these correlated effects e.g. more highly valued firms cross-list from causal relationships e.g. cross-listing causes' greater firm value. Using propensity score matching this paper serves to disentangle these effects using a sample of cross-listed emerging market firms. Our results suggest that for emerging market firms, cross-listing impacts positively on firm value for Level 1 OTC and Level 2/3 exchange-listed firms, but offers only short-run gains for Portal firms. Interestingly, the results for OTC and Exchange-listed ADRs are consistent with the signalling models of equity listing, while, in contrast, the timing hypothesis best describes the performance of Portal ADRs.

Expensing stock-based payments: A material concern?

Using SFAS 123 disclosures, Botosan and Plumlee [Botosan, C., & Plumlee, M. (2001). Stock option expense: The sword of Damocles Revealed. Accounting Horizons, 15, 311–327] find that if stock-based compensation were to be expensed rather than not recognised on the face of financial statements, the impact on key measures used to assess the performance of the fastest growing US firms would be material. Street and Cereola [Street, D. L., & Cereola, S. (2004). Stock option compensation: impact of expense recognition on performance indicators of non-domestic companies listed in the U.S. Journal of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation, 13, 21–37] subsequently also use SFAS 123 disclosures to determine that the average impact of expensing stock-based compensation on diluted EPS for non-US domiciled firms listed on US exchanges will be material and approximately 40%. In this paper, we examine whether these findings apply across international borders to firms that are required from 2005 to adopt IFRS 2 Share-Based Payment to expense stock-based payments, and across a broad range of industries and firms’ growth phases. Based on Australian Stock Exchange-listed firms’ 2002 stock-based compensation disclosures of the value of options granted to directors and the top 5 executives, the expensing of options will have a significant negative effect on approximately 20% of our sample firms’ financial performance ratios. It appears that the materiality of the impact is neither industry specific nor restricted to high growth firms. As the IFRS 2 expensing requirement extends to stock-based compensation issued to all employees, our findings are conservative estimates of the impact. The findings suggest that a stock-based compensation accounting policy change will affect recognised financial numbers and could have consequential ramifications for contractual specifications and valuations of firms across a range of industries and growth phases. Our sample of Australian firms provides an interesting context for the study, since these firms have neither traditionally expensed nor necessarily disclosed stock-based payments but from 2005, all stock-exchange listed Australian firms will be at the forefront of IFRS 2 adoption.

The impact of strategic alliances on shareholder wealth: the role of growth opportunity

The main purpose of this study is to examine the impact of strategic alliances on shareholder wealth while also considering the role of firm growth opportunity. By focusing on Taiwan Stock Exchange-listed firms that announced the formation of such alliances from 1996 to 2000, a sample of 140 firms is obtained using event study. The empirical results indicate that the effect of strategic alliance announcements on shareholder wealth is significantly negative for high-growth firms; while high-growth firms forming intra-industry alliances or partner with foreign companies have better announcement effects. For low-growth firms, inter-industry alliances and partnerships with domestic firms have better announcement effects. The findings also indicate that nonequity alliances are appropriate for high-growth firms, while more value accrues to low-growth firms where alliances with equity are involved. Finally, in the case of R&D alliances, the effect of the alliance announcement on shareholder wealth for high-growth firms is superior to that of low-growth firms.