Corporate Finance Commons^™

Post-Jgtrra Dividend Planning, Danny A. Pannese, Paul N. Iannone

Danny Pannese

The JGTRRA reduced the tax rate on dividends for individuals and lowered the accumulated earnings and personal holding company taxes for corporations until 2008. This article reviews some of the planning techniques corporations and shareholders can use to take advantage of the temporarily lower rates. One of the key provisions of the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 (JGTRRA), if not the prime emphasis of the legislation, is Section 302's reduction in the individual tax rate on corporate dividends received to 15% (5% for individuals in the 15% and 10% brackets). In an emerging trend, the ...

Bitcoin And The Blockchain As Possible Corporate Governance Tools: Strengths And Weaknesses, Fiammetta S. Piazza

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs

No abstract provided.

Political Contributions And Firm Performance: Evidence From Lobbying And Campaign Donations, Omer Unsal

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The following dissertation contains two distinct empirical essays which contribute to the overall field of Financial Economics. Chapter 1 titles as “Corporate Lobbying, CEO Political Ideology and Firm Performance”. We investigate the influence of CEO political orientation on corporate lobbying efforts. Specifically, we study whether CEO political ideology, in terms of manager-level campaign donations, determines the choice and amount of firm lobbying involvement and the impact of lobbying on firm value. We find a generous engagement in lobbying efforts by firms with Republican leaning-managers, which lobby a larger number of bills and have higher lobbying expenditures. However, the cost of ...

Valuation And Value Drivers For Us Based Airlines, An Analysis Of An Industry, Ryan Caveney

University of Tennessee Honors Thesis Projects

No abstract provided.

Corporate In-House Human Capital Investment In Tax Planning, Xia Chen, Qiang Cheng, Travis Chow, Yanju Liu

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In-house human capital investment in the tax function is a significant input to a firm’s tax planning. Yet, due to lack of data, there is little empirical evidence on whether corporate in-house tax departments are associated with effective tax planning. We examine this issue using hand-collected data on corporate tax employees in S&P1500 firms. We find that firms with larger in-house tax departments are more effective in tax planning: they have lower tax rates, report lower uncertain tax benefits, and exhibit less volatile tax rates. The results are stronger for firms with in-house tax departments that have a ...

People, Planet, Profit: Benefit And B Certified Corporations - Comprehension And Outlook Of Business Students, Arlene J. Nicholas, Samuel Sacco

Faculty and Staff - Articles & Papers

This paper is an overview of the emergence of Benefit and Certified B Corporations that aim to realize a profit and make a positive impact on society as measured by some third party standard. In this way, these corporations differ in corporate purpose from traditional C corporations. Directors and managers are accountable for that defined public benefit. Considerations of sustainable business practices have existed in many industries for several years. However, the recent growth in legislation to create a legal framework for Benefit Corporations is newly emergent. An examination of recent literature explains the rise of these socially responsible organizations ...

Samsung Technical And Fundamental Analysis, Stephen Janeczko

Honors Program Contracts

In this report, you will find a summary of current events with Samsung, current events in the South Korean economy, financial statement analysis, ratio analysis for Samsung and competitors, and stock recommendations based on current trading history.

2017 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 ...

Who Bleeds When The Wolves Bite? A Flesh-And-Blood Perspective On Hedge Fund Activism And Our Strange Corporate Governance System, Leo E. Strine Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

This paper examines the effects of hedge fund activism and so-called wolf pack activity on the ordinary human beings—the human investors—who fund our capital markets but who, as indirect of owners of corporate equity, have only limited direct power to ensure that the capital they contribute is deployed to serve their welfare and in turn the broader social good.

Most human investors in fact depend much more on their labor than on their equity for their wealth and therefore care deeply about whether our corporate governance system creates incentives for corporations to create and sustain jobs for them ...

Ex-Dividend Price Behavior In Spanish Speaking Markets: Do Stocks Behave Differently In Spain, Mexico, And Chile?, Kayla E. Nikosey

Honors Projects in Finance

The main focus of this thesis is to analyze the behavior of stock price on ex-dividend day of ADRs in Spain, Mexico, and Chile. Announcement date, and ex-dividend date for each ADR is collected to be analyzed against the other ADRs. One would expect different behaviors in the different markets because of different tax treatments in Chile, Mexico, and Spain. Traditional event testing is being used to analyze the stock price behavior on and around ex-dividend days. The event test measures the impact of regulatory events and allows for abnormal changes in stock prices that occur in conjunction with dividend ...

International Currency Correlation, Thomas Griffin

Honors Projects in Finance

The purpose of this project is to examine the effects that one country’s currency can have on another countries currency. Currency is one of the key determinants of how a country’s economy is performing compared to the rest of the world. Some currencies have a negative or positive correlation with other currencies around the world. This data will help investors determine what they can expect to happen to a countries currency when there is a fluctuation in another currency. Certain industry practices where this information will be useful include the hedge fund industry and other global companies. This ...

Suppliers, Investors, And Equity Market Liberalizations, Martin Strieborny

Martin Strieborny

In Pursuit Of Good & Gold: Data Observations Of Employee Ownership & Impact Investment, Christopher Geczy, Jessica S. Jeffers, David K. Musto, Anne M. Tucker

Anne Tucker

A startup's path to self-sustaining profitability is risky and hard, and most do not make it. Venture capital (VC) investors try to improve these odds with contractual terms that focus and sharpen employees' incentives to pursue gold. If the employees and investors expect the startup to balance the goal of profitability with another goal - the goal of good - the risks are likely to both grow and multiply. They grow to the extent that profits are threatened, and they multiply to the extent that balancing competing goals adds a dimension to the incentive problem. In this Article, we explore contracting ...

Rethinking Corporate Governance For A Bondholder Financed, Systemically Risky World, Steven L. Schwarcz

William & Mary Law Review

This Article makes two arguments that, combined, demonstrate an important synergy: first, including bondholders in corporate governance could help to reduce systemic risk because bondholders are more risk averse than shareholders; second, corporate governance should include bondholders because bonds now dwarf equity as a source of corporate financing and bond prices are increasingly tied to firm performance.

Conditional Conservatism And Debt Versus Equity Financing, Beng Wee Goh, Chee Yeow Lim, Gerald J. Lobo, Yen H. Tong

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Extant research suggests that conditional conservatism reduces information asymmetry between a firm and its shareholders as well as its debtholders. However, there is little evidence on whether conditional conservatism reduces information asymmetry differentially for shareholders and debtholders. We use the setting of a firm's choice between equity versus debt when it seeks a significant amount of external financing to examine this research question. We find that when firms raise a significant amount of external financing, the use of equity (versus debt) increases with the level of conservatism. We also find that the reduction in cost of equity associated with ...

Public Company Health Insurers And Medical Loss Ratios: An Event Study Of Dates Associated With The Affordable Care Act, Rachelle Quinn

Doctor of Business Administration (DBA)

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has proved to be a contentious regulatory and political topic. Although key features were established within the law the complexity of the new provisions and political opposition resulted in a series of federal and state governmental process changes, rule clarifications, and legal challenges. One component of the ACA is the introduction of a federal Medical Loss Ratio (MLR), which requires insurers to spend specified percentages of their premium revenue dollars on medical services and quality improvement actions. If thresholds are not met, insurers must refund premiums to their members, potentially removing millions of dollars from ...

Voluntary Fair Value Disclosures Beyond Sfas 157’S Three-Level Estimates, Sung Gon Chung, Beng Wee Goh, Jeffrey Ng, Kevin Ow Yong

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Some firms voluntarily make disclosures about the controls and processes in place to ensure the reliability of fair value estimates. Consistent with these disclosures being driven by management’s concerns about the reliability of their SFAS 157 estimates, we find that firms with more opaque estimates are more likely to provide such disclosures. We then examine whether these disclosures increase the reliability of fair value estimates. We find that they are associated with higher market pricing and lower information risk for Level 3 estimates. Further analyses of the contents of the reliability disclosures reveal that the following are particularly important ...

Regulatory Pressure And Income Smoothing By Banks In Response To Anticipated Changes To The Basel Ii Accord, Chu Yeong Lim, Keng Kevin Ow Yong

Research Collection School of Accountancy

We examine the effects of the revised Basel II rules on bank managers’ discretionary behavior, specifically income smoothing and loan loss provisioning. As the revised rules exert greater regulatory pressure on corporate than retail banking, we predict corporate bank managers to reduce risk-taking activities or increase income smoothing. Analysis of segmental reports reveals greater (less) income smoothing in the corporate banking segments of low-capital (high-capital) banks during the Basel II period, with their managers recognizing loan loss provisions in a less timely fashion. We find no such effects for retail banking. Although we document an initially negative market reaction to ...

The New Bond Workouts, William W. Bratton, Adam J. Levitin

Faculty Scholarship

Bond workouts are a famously dysfunctional method of debt restructuring, ridden with opportunistic and coercive behavior by bondholders and bond issuers. Yet since 2008 bond workouts have quietly started to work. A cognizable portion of the restructuring market has shifted from bankruptcy court to out-of-court workouts by way of exchange offers made only to large institutional investors. The new workouts feature a battery of strong-arm tactics by bond issuers, and aggrieved bondholders have complained in court. The result has been a new, broad reading of the primary law governing workouts, section 316(b) of the Trust Indenture Act of 1939 ...

You Can’T Stop What You Can’T See: Complementary Risk Mitigation Through Compensation Disclosure, Matt Reeder

William & Mary Business Law Review

Section 956 of the Dodd-Frank Act requires regulators to help prevent the next financial crisis by monitoring executive compensation arrangements to prevent them from becoming excessive or leading to “material financial loss.” A now-pending rule seeks to do just this. This Article argues that the rule is well-conceived inasmuch as it limits the total portion of compensation that can be based on risk-inducing incentives, ties incentive-based compensation to longer-term performance, places a ceiling on potential incentivebased earnings, provides for downward adjustment and clawbacks, prohibits many hedging behaviors, and institutionalizes governance mechanisms and oversight policies. But, by placing a number of ...