Managerial Empire Research Articles

Mandatory audit partner rotation and stock price crash risk: causal evidence from a natural experiment

PurposeThis study aims to examine whether mandatory audit partner rotation is associated with future stock price crash risk.Design/methodology/approachThis study makes use of a regulatory change from the Ministry of Finance of China and the China Securities Regulation Commission, which requires mandatory rotation of audit partners since 2004, as a natural experiment to establish causality and applies a difference-in-difference research design.FindingsAudit partner rotation leads to a significant decrease in future stock price crash risk in the departing partner’s final year of tenure preceding mandatory rotation, consistent with peer monitoring argument of mandatory rotation. Inconsistent with other arguments, including client-specific knowledge, fresh perspective and auditor independence, no significant effect takes a place in the incoming partner’s first year of tenure following mandatory rotation. Mechanism analysis documents that mandatory audit partner rotation reduces stock price crash risk by improving audit quality and constraining managerial empire building.Originality/valueThe results shed new light on the capital market consequence of mandatory audit partner rotation and the cause of stock price crash risk.

Capital budgeting and managerial empire building

I examine how a company's headquarters use an empire-building manager's report about decision-relevant private information to make capital budgeting decisions and compensate the manager. To this end, I construct a model comprising the headquarters (principal) and the manager (agent), who reports on the investment project's expected profitability. I identify the optimal investment sizes and compensation payments, where the headquarters trade off managerial information rents – arising from empire-building benefits inducing the manager to favour overinvestment – for investment efficiency. The headquarters counteract the manager's desire for overinvestment with investment distortions in the form of underinvestment (or overinvestment) for a high (or low) expected profitability. Due to these distortions, the expected compensation is not monotone in the level of empire-building benefits. Unlike previous capital budgeting studies, in this study, I show that managerial empire-building benefits can multi-directionally affect companies' optimal capital budgeting decisions and related compensation schemes.

Does corporate tax avoidance promote managerial empire building?

We examine the association between corporate tax avoidance and empire building using 35,060 firm-year observations from the United States (US) for the period 1991–2015. We build a composite empire building measure by conducting a factor analysis on four popular empire building proxies used in the literature. We find a positive association between this composite measure and the four proxies used to represent the tax avoidance of firms in our sample. As our results suggest, agency problems are inflicted upon firms employing tax avoidance strategies which, in turn, facilitate managerial rent extraction through aggressiveness in growth and the accumulation of assets. Furthermore, the relationship of corporate tax avoidance to managerial empire building is found to be more pronounced in firms with weak governance, poor monitoring mechanisms, greater Chief Executive Officer (CEO) power and weak corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance. We also find that empire building-motivated tax avoidance leads to lower firm valuation. Our results remain insensitive even when employing several robustness tests.

Winning megadeals: The dual role of acquirer advisors in loan-financed mergers and acquisitions

Acquirer advisors now often arrange syndicated loans financing merger and acquisition deals they advise on. This paper shows that such an advisor-lender dual role facilitates valuable big-ticket deals. There is a positive announcement effect for the acquirer which also shows no systematic post-deal underperformance—dispelling concerns about the advisor abetting managerial empire building. But advisor-led syndicated loans, despite being larger in size, have higher loan spreads than those led by non-advisors. Advisors apparently have an information advantage but rent extraction is unlikely. The higher charges are justifiable in view of the significantly lower post-deal creditworthiness of dual-role bidders. Advisor-lender's superior information about adverse changes in the credit risk is rationally priced into the dual-role interest rate premium.

Opening the Black Box of Capital Investment: The Roles of Capital Expenditure Budget and Execution

Prior research documents significant inefficiencies of corporate capital expenditures. However, a firm’s internal investment decision process remains mostly an empirical black box. Using manually collected data, we decompose the investment process into two stages: budgeting of capital expenditures and execution of the budget. Consistent with the theoretical prediction that boards use capital rationing in budgets to counter managerial empire building, we find that boards place restrictions on capital spending in investment budgets initially but allow managers to use additional capital for follow-up projects. While some managers use their discretions to incorporate economic news in their investment decisions, many others engage in empire building in the execution stage. We find more capital rationing and more opportunistic execution behavior in firms with lower accounting quality. These findings together support the existence of capital rationing in internal corporate investment process. Our study contributes to a better understanding of how firms make investment decisions internally and the important role of accounting quality.

Litigation Risk and Cost Behavior: Evidence from Derivative Lawsuits

This study explores whether managers’ personal litigation risk impacts managerial empire building through the lens of their firms’ cost behavior. Exploiting the staggered adoption of universal demand (UD) laws at the state-level in the U.S., we find a significant decrease in Selling, General & Administrative (SGA (2) with weaker corporate governance; (3) operating in less competitive product markets; (4) with higher information asymmetry; and (5) with lower ex ante litigation risk. Our findings highlight the importance of shareholders’ litigation rights in curbing managerial empire building and add to the agency explanation for cost behavior.

Managerial empire building and segment reporting quality: The role of auditor industry specialization

This study aims to explore whether empire building firms have lower segment reporting quality under the new accounting standard-IFRS No. 8, Operating Segments. IFRS No. 8 requires firms to report segment information on basis of the management approach, which implying the opportunity of managerial manipulation. We use the sample of 8 countries that have followed IFRS 8 over the period 2009-2011, and find that when managers with high incentives to build managerial empire will conceal segment reporting information on purpose which leads to lower segment reporting quality. Furthermore, our results show that external auditors with industrial experience attenuate the agency problem of managerial empire building and consequently increase segment reporting quality.

Takeover defenses, innovation, and value creation: Evidence from acquisition decisions

The desirability of antitakeover provisions (ATPs) is a contentious issue. ATPs might enable managerial empire building by insulating managers from disciplinary takeovers. However, some companies, such as �hard-to-value� (HTV) companies, might trade at a discount due to valuation difficulties, thereby exposing HTV companies to opportunistic takeovers and creating agency conflicts of managerial risk aversion. ATPs might ameliorate such managerial risk aversion by inhibiting opportunistic takeovers. This paper analyzes acquisitions made by HTV firms, focusing on whether the acquirer (not the target) is entrenched in order to examine the impact of entrenchment managerial decision making. The results show that HTV firms that are entrenched make acquisitions that generate more shareholder wealth and are more likely to increase corporate innovation, suggesting that ATPs can be beneficial in some firms.

Does Short Selling Discipline Managerial Empire Building?

We explore the disciplining effect of short selling on overinvestment. Firms with more stock lending supply have higher abnormal announcement stock returns of acquiring firms, lower subsequent abnormal capital investments, and longer spells between large investments, and higher subsequent Tobin’s Q and ROA. Alleviating the endogeneity concern, our multivariate difference-in-difference analysis shows that this disciplinary force of lending supply is more effective for firms in the Regulation SHO-PILOT Program. We identify two mechanisms through which short selling disciplines managers: managers’ wealth-performance sensitivity and likelihood of hostile takeovers. Additionally, the disciplinary force only exists for non-financial-constrained firms and nonall-cash M&A deals.

Takeover Protection as a Driver of Innovation and Value Creation

The desirability of anti-takeover provisions (ATPs) is a contentious issue. ATPs might enable managerial empire building by insulating managers from disciplinary takeovers. However, some companies, such as ‘hard-to-value’ (HTV) companies, might trade at a discount due to valuation difficulties, thereby exposing HTV companies to opportunistic takeovers, and creating agency conflicts of managerial risk-aversion. ATPs might ameliorate such managerial risk aversion by inhibiting opportunistic takeovers. This paper analyzes acquisitions made by HTV firms, focusing on whether the acquirer (not the target) is entrenched in order to examine the impact of entrenchment managerial decision-making. The results show that HTV firms that are entrenched make acquisitions that generate more shareholder wealth and are more likely to increase corporate innovation, suggesting that ATPs can be beneficial in some firms.

Managerial Empire Building and Firm Disclosure

ABSTRACTThis study tests the agency cost hypothesis in the context of geographic earnings disclosures. The agency cost hypothesis predicts that managers, when not monitored by shareholders, make self‐maximizing decisions that may not necessarily be in the best interest of shareholders. These decisions include aggressively growing the firm, which reduces profitability and destroys firm value. Geographic earnings disclosures provide an interesting context to examine this issue. Beginning with Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 131 (SFAS 131), most U.S. multinational firms are no longer required to disclose earnings by geographic area (e.g., net income in Mexico or net income in East Asia). Such nondisclosure potentially reduces the ability of shareholders to monitor managers' decisions related to foreign operations. Using a sample of U.S. multinationals with substantial foreign operations, we find that nondisclosing firms, relative to firms that continue to disclose geographic earnings, experience greater expansion of foreign sales, produce lower foreign profit margins, and have lower firm value in the post–SFAS 131 period. Our conclusions are strengthened by the fact that these differences do not exist in the pre–SFAS 131 period and do not relate to domestic operations. We find differences in the predicted direction only for foreign operations and only after adoption of SFAS 131. Our results are robust to the inclusion of an extensive set of control variables related to alternative corporate governance mechanisms, operating performance, and the firm's information environment. Overall, the results are consistent with the agency cost hypothesis and the important role of financial disclosures in monitoring managers.

Managerial Empire Building and Firm Disclosure

This study tests the agency cost hypothesis in the context of geographic earnings disclosures. The agency cost hypothesis predicts that managers, when not monitored by shareholders, will make self-maximizing decisions which may not necessarily be in the best interest of shareholders. These decisions include aggressively growing the firm, which reduces profitability and destroys firm value. Geographic earnings disclosures provide an interesting context to examine this issue. Beginning with Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 131 (SFAS 131), most U.S. multinational firms are no longer required to disclose earnings by geographic area (e.g., net income in Mexico or net income in East Asia). Such non-disclosure potentially reduces the ability of shareholders to monitor managers' decisions related to foreign operations. Using a sample of U.S. multinationals with substantial foreign operations, we find that non-disclosing firms, relative to firms that continue to disclose geographic earnings, experience greater expansion of foreign sales, produce lower foreign profit margins, and have lower firm value in the post-SFAS 131 period. Our conclusions are strengthened by the fact that these differences do not exist in the pre-SFAS 131 period and do not relate to domestic operations. We find differences in the predicted direction only for foreign operations and only after adoption of SFAS 131. Our results are robust to the inclusion of an extensive set of control variables related to alternative corporate governance mechanisms, operating performance, and the firm's information environment. Overall, the results are consistent with the agency cost hypothesis and the important role of financial disclosures in monitoring managers.

Managerial Empire Building, Corporate Governance, and the Asymmetrical Behavior of Selling, General, and Administrative Costs

Managerial Empire Building, Corporate Governance, and the Asymmetrical Behavior of Selling, General, and Administrative Costs

Why Do Managers Make Serial Acquisitions? An Investigation of Performance Predictability in Serial Acquisitions

In this paper we assess i) the motivation behind managers' decision to engage in serial acquisitions and ii) whether the quality of an acquisition deal can predict the quality of subsequent deals of the series. We test four potential explanations for serial acquisitions: managerial overconfidence, superior managerial acquisition skill, managerial empire building behavior, and whether the acquisitions comprise a single plan. As a group, serial bidders show no evidence of performance persistence or reversal, but acquirers that generate positive return in a deal exhibit persistent success in subsequent deals. Our evidence indicates that some managers have superior acquisition skills and our results are robust to several acquirer and deal characteristics. Finally, we show that value-increasing deals by a bidder offer useful predictions that those acquisitions will be followed by subsequent value-increasing deals.