Corporate Finance Commons^™

Firm-Level Analysis Of The Tax Cuts And Jobs Act On Capital Expenditures, Mason Westphal

Accounting Undergraduate Honors Theses

This study investigates the firm-level consequences to capital expenditure levels from the passing of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA). It theorized that favorable tax provisions in the TCJA would cause firms to increase their levels of capital expenditures. To test this hypothesis, the study analyzed the capital expenditure levels of public firms from 1986-2019 controlling for factors such as national gross domestic product (GDP) growth and used a dummy variable of reporting periods after 2018 to represent the effects of the TCJA. In contrast to the original hypothesis, the results demonstrate that the TCJA had a ...

Otter Tail Corporation, Heather Strese

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

In my valuation model I gathered Otter Tail Corporation’s financial statements, historical and industry data, public information and ratio analysis from Mergent Online, Yahoo Finance and Otter Tail Corporation’s 2018 annual report. I discount the expected free cash flows at the WACC and estimate that Otter Tail Corporation’s stock is price is at USD 56.36 per share as of November 1^st, 2019, given the small difference between my estimated price per share and the current price per share in the market, and consistent with the EV/EBITDA multiple, I recommend a HOLD on the stock ...

Executive Compensation Incentives Impact On The Tone And Readability Of Financial Reports, Xiaoyan Mi

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports

Financial disclosures do not only influence the future reaction of customers, they also imply the financial strategies of the managers of corporations. Through analysis, we find a strong causal relationship between tone and readability of financial disclosures and incentive methods of managers. Controlling executives’ pay-performance sensitivity (delta) and other variables, executives with higher sensitivity of executives’ wealth to stock volatility (vega) (Coles, Daniel, Naveen, 2004) tend to announce reports with more negative tone and low readability.

The Substantial Growth Of Shadow Banking, Financial Technology And Digital Currency And Their Respective Roles In Shaping The Next Financial Crisis, Vardhan S. Chulani Mr.

Undergraduate Economic Review

Based on Goldman Sachs’ model and the state of current affairs, an underlying possibility of a financial crisis occurring in the foreseeable future does exist. This could be due to ongoing trade war and negotiations with different countries, the new policies introduced by political parties and their respective impacts, high amounts of corporate and student debts along with auto loans in the economy, thus indicating signs of excessive leverage and resulting in depressing consumer confidence. International issues such as Brexit, the existing currency and debt crisis with Turkey, and China’s debt bubble could also contribute to the global growth ...

Stock Market Drivers: Corporate Share Repurchases, Parker Wolf

Business and Economics Honors Papers

Such financial tools as share buybacks are coming under scrutiny by many investment experts. Evidence suggests that share repurchases foster a short-term focus in corporate managers who have a share-based compensation. Recent studies and research draw attention to the negative consequences of corporate share repurchases. While share buybacks were originally intended to create financial value for intrinsically undervalued shares, they are increasingly coming under scrutiny for enabling shareholders to increase their value of wealth at the expense of other stakeholders. With increased stock option plans for corporate executives, the association between increase in open market share buyback activity and compensation ...

2020 Private Capital Markets Report, Craig R. Everett

Pepperdine Private Capital Markets Report

The Pepperdine private cost of capital survey was originally launched in 2007 and is the first comprehensive and simultaneous investigation of the major private capital market segments. This year’s survey specifically examined the behavior of senior lenders, asset‐based lenders, mezzanine funds, private equity groups, venture capital firms, angel investors, privately‐held businesses, investment bankers, business brokers, limited partners, and business appraisers. The Pepperdine survey investigated, for each private capital market segment, the important benchmarks that must be met in order to qualify for capital, how much capital is typically accessible, what the required returns are for extending capital ...

Shattering Glass Ceilings: Where Are All Of The Women In Finance?, Rebecca Schubach

Business and Economics Honors Papers

At a time when women are equally represented in professional fields such as medicine and academia, the finance industry is still facing a lack of gender diversity, most notability at the C-Suite level. Statistics on the paucity of women paint a bleak picture, despite the fact that women are awarded majority of undergraduate and graduate degrees in the United States, a reversal from just one generation ago. This begs the question, what is deterring women from a career in finance? Are compensation discrepancies at play? This paper seeks to examine if being a female truly penalizes a woman in regards ...

The Cost Of Big Data: Evaluating The Effects Of The European Union’S General Data Protection Regulation, Kara Rebecca White

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Do Firms Adapt To Climate Change? Evidence From Establishment-Level Data, Frank Weikai Li, Yupeng Lin, Zuben Jin, Zilong Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper examines firms’ adaptation to long-term changes in climatic conditions. Using detailed information of establishments owned by U.S. public firms from 1990 to 2012, we show that higher abnormal temperatures over the previous five years in a county lead to a significant reduction in local employment and the number of establishments. Further tests suggest that the decline in employment and establishments is largely due to a decline in local consumer demand rather than lower labor productivity. We also find that firms more likely take adaptive actions when their managers are more likely to believe in, or are concerned ...

Commercial Law Intersections, Giuliano Castellano, Andrea Tosato

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

Commercial law is not a single, monolithic entity. It has grown into a dense thicket of subject-specific branches that govern a broad range of transactions and corporate actions. When one of these events falls concurrently within the purview of two or more of these commercial law branches - such as corporate law, intellectual property law, secured transactions law, conduct and prudential regulation - an overlap materializes. We refer to this legal phenomenon as a commercial law intersection (CLI). Some notable examples of transactions that feature CLIs include bank loans secured by shares, supply chain financing arrangements, patent cross-licensing, and blockchain-based initial coin ...

An Essay On Pluralism In Financial Market Infrastructure Design: The Case Of Securities Holding In The United States, Charles W. Mooney Jr.

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

This essay will appear as a chapter in a forthcoming edited volume published by Oxford University Press. It builds on the earlier article, Beyond Intermediation: A New (FinTech) Model for Securities Holding Infrastructures, 22 U. Pa. J. Bus. L. 386 (2020), which argues that serious consideration should be given to modifications of the deeply intermediated securities holding systems in the United States and elsewhere. Many of the costs and risks imposed by the intermediated holding systems fall within the domain of the regulation of securities markets (internal costs), such as impairments of shareholder voting and bondholder claims against issuers. Others ...

Guarantees And Capital Infusions In Response To Financial Crises B: U.S. Guarantees During The Global Financial Crisis, June Rhee, Andrew Metrick

Journal of Financial Crises

During 2008-09, the federal government extended multiple guarantee programs in an effort to restore the financial market and contain the panic and crisis in the market. For example, the Treasury provided a temporary guarantee program for the money market funds, the FDIC decided to stand behind certain debts and non-interest-bearing transaction accounts, and the Treasury, the FDIC, and the Federal Reserve agreed to share losses in certain assets belonging to Citigroup. This case reviews these guarantee programs implemented during the global financial crisis by the government and explores the different rationale that shaped certain design features of each program.

Guarantees And Capital Infusions In Response To Financial Crises A: Haircuts And Resolutions, June Rhee, Andrew Metrick

Journal of Financial Crises

After the mortgage market meltdown in mid-2007 and during the financial crisis in 2008, major financial institutions around the world were on the verge of collapsing one after another. Faced with these troubles, the government had to respond quickly to contain the crisis as efficiently as possible. It was, however, limited in resources, time, and experience. To make matters worse, the complexity and opaqueness of the financial market and these institutions greatly affected the government’s ability to design an efficient and consistent method to contain the crisis. Shortly after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy on September 15, 2008, American ...

Permanent Equity: Successfully Finding And Buying A Small Business, Lewis Wang

Senior Theses

This thesis aims to build off the existing research on the advantages of permanent equity within the micro-cap market space. This strategy combines many advantages from private equity, venture capital, small-cap, and value / quality investing in order to generate a differentiated return. While the pros and cons of these various strategies have been explored by previous academic research, not much has been written on the actual implementation and choices practitioners must make when they decide how to deploy capital. In order to dive deeper into implementation, this thesis presents several anecdotes of various firms that invest in this space according ...

The Impact Of American Economic Aid On Post-World War Ii Germany, Gabriella Barber, Emily T. Carlstrom

Senior Theses

This paper examines the state of Germany immediately after World War II, describing how the American government intervened in West German reconstruction. It analyzes three specific German companies that overcame hardship in the 1940s and 50s and have become powerhouses today. Additionally, an overview of the current German economy shows how the country is positioned as a world leader.

Research was conducted using literary print sources, scholarly internet databases, and a formal interview with Klaus Becker, Honorary Consul to Germany. He is a German-American businessman who has held roles in several non-political associations, including President of the Charlotte World Trade ...

The Adoption Of Cryptocurrency Technology Into The Us Banking Infrastructure, Trevor Melito

Senior Theses

This thesis examines the possibility of using Blockchain technology to permanently change the payment structure of the US banking system. First, I examine the current technology that dominates the banking sector. I introduce the most frequently used payments methods including Automatic Clearing House transfers and wire transfers, both domestically and internationally. In addition, I highlight the major players controlling these transactions. Under the current system, frictions between senders and receivers cause billions of dollars in losses each year.

Next, I examine Blockchain’s roots along with some similar cryptocurrency technology, namely Distributed Ledger Technology and Smart Contracts. The transparency, security ...

Private Company Lies, Elizabeth Pollman

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

Rule 10b-5’s antifraud catch-all is one of the most consequential pieces of American administrative law and most highly developed areas of judicially-created federal law. Although the rule broadly prohibits securities fraud in both public and private company stock, the vast majority of jurisprudence, and the voluminous academic literature that accompanies it, has developed through a public company lens.

This Article illuminates how the explosive growth of private markets has left huge portions of U.S. capital markets with relatively light securities fraud scrutiny and enforcement. Some of the largest private companies by valuation grow in an environment of extreme ...

The 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines: A Suggested Revision (March 26, 2020), Steven C. Salop

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The FTC and DOJ requested comments on their draft Vertical Merger Guidelines in January 2020. This article is a complete alternative set of suggested Vertical Merger Guidelines that reflects and supplements the approach explained in the comments submitted by the author along with Jonathan. Baker, Nancy Rose and Fiona Scott Morton, as well as their other comments, and might be read in conjunction with those comments. This suggested revision of the Agencies’ draft expands the list of potential competition harms and provides illustrative examples. It expands and unifies the discussion and treatment of potential competitive benefits. It deletes the quasi-safe ...

Incorporating Financial Statement Information To Improve Forecasts Of Corporate Taxable Income, Danielle H. Green, Erin E. Henry, Sarah M. Parsons, George A. Plesko

WCBT Faculty Publications

We contribute to the research on the information content of earnings as it applies to the forecasting of economic activity across reporting models. We examine whether publicly available financial statement information is incrementally useful in forecasting confidentially reported taxable income. More precise firm-level taxable income forecasts can improve policymakers’ modeling of the tax system and their ability to analyze the effect of proposed changes in corporate tax law. When aggregated, improved micro-forecasts can also yield more accurate macro-forecasts of corporate taxable income, a significant component of the federal budget. We find that financial statement information improves firm-level estimates of future ...

What Are You Saying? Using Topic To Detect Financial Misreporting, Nerissa C. Brown, Richard M. Crowley, W. Brooke Elliott

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We use a machine learning technique to assess whether the thematic content of financial statement disclosures (labeled topic) is incrementally informative in predicting intentional misreporting. Using a Bayesian topic modeling algorithm, we determine and empirically quantify the topic content of a large collection of 10‐K narratives spanning 1994 to 2012. We find that the algorithm produces a valid set of semantically meaningful topics that predict financial misreporting, based on samples of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) enforcement actions (Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases [AAERs]) and irregularities identified from financial restatements and 10‐K filing amendments. Our out‐of‐sample ...