Business Commons^™

The Quality Of Corporate Governance And The Length It Takes To Remove Apoor Performing Ceo. Does Performance Of The Former Firm Affect A Ceo's Ability To Find An Identical With A Subsequent Firm?, Huong Nguyen

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Abstract 1:

In this paper, we investigate the effects of internal corporate governance on the length it takes to remove a CEO after the initial sign of poor firm performance. We find that firms that have a better quality of internal corporate governance are quicker to remove poor-performing CEOs. This result persists after controlling for other factors that might influence the CEO removal decision.

Abstract 2:

Employing a sample of voluntary CEO turnovers selected from S&P 500 firms over the period 2004-2009, I investigate the impact prior firm performance on a CEO’s potential of being hired on an equivalent job …

A Comparative Study Of Governing Board Composition And Financial Performace Measures In New Hampshire Hospitals, Heather C. Brooks

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Industry Comparison Of Executive Compensation And Equity Considerations, Louis Chan

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Training And Development Guide For A Culinary Department In A Private University, Kimberly Rosenbaum

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In an online study of the Council of Hotel and Restaurant Trainers (CHART), 53% of respondents reported their budgets for training were being carefully looked at. From this scrutiny, training budgets in the past 18 months have significantly decreased (Bertra, 2009, p. 1). Slashed training budgets have become another sign of the recessionary times, forcing operators to direct their funds to customer service, hoping to set them apart in the competitive environment known as hospitality (Bertra, 2009, p. 1).

Corporate Governance, Performance And Risk-Taking In The U.S. Banking Industry, Jennifer Osullivan

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, we first examine the relationship between performance of the bank holding company and several board characteristics. We use five proxies for bank performance including Tobin’s Q, ROA, loan loss reserve ratio, non-performing asset ratio, and net charge-offs ratio. Board characteristic variables we include are board size, proportion of outsiders, CEO power, CEO tenure and board tenure. We find that a large board enhances bank performance, as proxied by Tobin’s Q and loan quality variables. We find no evidence that board structure or CEO power influences firm performance. We see that CEO and board tenure have a positive …

Two Essays In Financial Economics, Jatin Ravikant Malhotra

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In the first chapter of this dissertation, I examine the relationship between hedging and diversification effects on CEO compensation in the Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) industry. The REIT industry is suitable for this investigation for various reasons; primarily being that the REIT sample represents a relatively clean sample to study the effects of diversification and hedging on compensations. I find a positive and significant relationship between the interaction variable which reflects the effects of both hedging and diversification and CEO pay-for-performance sensitivity. This is consistent with the notion that managers are in a better position to manage firm risk …

Ownership Structure And Monitoring Around Secondary Offerings, Joshua Tyler White

Doctoral Dissertations

Secondary offerings represent a unique setting to examine investors’ perception of the value of monitoring intensity around changes in block ownership. I find blockholders present at 97% of firms with a secondary offering over 1998-2006. These blockholders participate in 87% of secondary offerings and offer the majority of secondary shares in 75% of these offerings. Using a unique, hand-collected dataset of ownership structure, I empirically test two hypotheses explaining secondary offering announcement returns and underpricing based on seller heterogeneities: the information hypothesis and the monitoring hypothesis. The results largely support the monitoring hypothesis. Secondary offerings by close, active monitors who …

Three Essays On External Sources Of Corporate Governance, Kevin K. Lee

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Corporate governance is the system by which corporations are controlled. External sources of governance include regulatory and market mechanisms as well as the interplay of goals between managers, the board, and shareholders. Other external sources can include informal institutions which can shape goals as well as suggested by institutional theory, effectively constrain human behavior. In my first essay, I argue that foreign direct investors can act as agents of change in corporate governance. Investigating changes in ownership and control of Swedish firms, I find that active foreign investors' participation move firms away from a Swedish stakeholder orientation toward an Anglo-American …

Two Essays On Executive Pay And Firm Performance, Thuong Quang Nguyen

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Two essays of this dissertation study the relationship between executive compensation and firm performance. These essays analyze both compensation level and compensation structure, and focus not only on CEO compensation but also on Top Management Team (TMT) compensation as well as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) compensation. Methodologically, these essays use different regression techniques to explore the nature of time series over cross sections of executive compensation data in order to find a reliable relationship between executive compensation and firm performance.

The first essay investigates the TMT compensation - firm performance relationship and finds that the compensation dispersion among TMT members …

A Study Of Risk-Taking Behavior In Investment Banking, Elzotbek Rustambekov

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

This dissertation examines corporate risk-taking behavior by investment banks in the United States. This study was sparked by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, one of the largest bankruptcy filings in U.S. history. This dissertation examines the specific factors that drove investment banks such as Lehman Brothers to take excessive risks, and how the deregulation of the US financial services industry towards the end of the 1990s contributed to risk-taking behavior.

I use four theoretical perspectives to examine corporate risk-taking behavior among investment banks. These perspectives include: institutional theory, behavioral theory of the firm, knowledge based view (KBV) of the firm, …

Two Essays: “Does Corporate Governance Affect The Adjustment Speed Towards Target Capital Structure?” And “Do Option Traders On Reits And Non-Reits React Differently To New Information?”, Li-Kai Liao

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The first chapter investigates how corporate governance influences firms’ capital structure behavior. Based on the premise that costs associated with deviations from the target capital structure are positively correlated to the extent of deviation, we hypothesize that the initial deviation from the target will be shorter for a firm with good corporate governance than for a firm with poor corporate governance. We also hypothesize that the former group will employ a higher speed of adjustment towards target than the latter group due primarily to the following reasons. First, a firm with well-placed governance system will adjust at a faster rate …

Two Essays In Islamic Finance And Investment, Hesham J. Merdad

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The main purpose of this dissertation is to lessen the gap in the Islamic finance and investment literature by providing new answers to the most vital question raised in that literature: Is the adherence to the Shariah law associated with at any cost?

The first chapter provides a primer on Islamic finance. It discusses several restrictions and necessary adaptations that must be made to have a Shariah-compliant product. The takeaway is that Shariah law mandates is related to fundamentals and, thus has a direct effect on the risk-return profile of all sorts of different products. This is referred to as …

Cross-Listed Firms And Shareholder-Initiated Lawsuits: The Market Penalties Of Securities Class Action Lawsuits Against Foreign Firms, Kathryn Mary Schumann

Doctoral Dissertations

This paper examines the market penalties levied by shareholders against firms that are alleged to have violated securities laws within the U.S. Using a sample of private securities class action cases brought against foreign firms that cross-list on the major U.S. exchanges, this paper presents evidence that the enforcement risk criticism may not be as severe as initially thought. I examine market penalties at alleged violation disclosure dates and securities class action filing dates and find that each event corresponds to an economically and statistically significant loss of value for the accused firm. On average I find that the violation …

Essays On Mergers And Acquisitions And Governance, Rwan Ibrahim Talib El-Khatib

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There is a recent strand of corporate finance literature that explores the impact of executives and directors' Social connections on firm value, performance, and governance. Those studies document that such Social connections could be beneficial when they enhance the sharing of information and knowledge, but could also be detrimental when associated with CEOs, as they could provide the CEO with a source of influence that makes her more entrenched and powerful.

In the first essay, I use four common measures of network centrality to compute the position of the CEO within the Social network of all executives and directors of …

3d – Personalized Statues Business Plan: Istatue, Junjie Li

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Opportunity Statement

As people in our current society are becoming more fashionable and self-expressive, the demand of products that can enhance uniqueness and demonstrate personality is increasing drastically. iStatue, with the introduction of 3D Personalized Statues, will provide a unique product with quality and satisfaction to its customers.

Business Concept & Product

iStatue will challenge market leaders Build-a Bear Workshop and American Girl with a personalized toy to satisfy customers’ unique needs. The sculpture is a personalized toy in which the face head of the statues are made based on the picture of customers and customers control over which the …

Capitalization Structure: The Effects Of Leverage On Growth Prospects, Laura Cawley, Roers Janku

Honors Capstone Projects - All

In this paper we quantitatively analyzed capital structure to lead to an understanding of the effects of debt within capital structure. Utilizing EBITDA growth as a proxy for the effects of leverage, we quantitatively analyzed the impact of the capitalization decision. Through the use of a model we analyzed 180 companies to come to conclusions about the EBITDA growth rate necessary as determined by leverage.

Essays On Spatial Analysis Of Foreign Direct Investment And Economic Growth Determinants In Developing Countries, Uwaoma George Nwaogu

Dissertations

This dissertation uses spatial econometric technique to investigate the role of spatial interdependence/third-country effects on Multinational Enterprises (MNE’s) for affiliate location choice, spillover effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) determinants, and the economic growth of developing countries. Unlike non-spatial models, the advantage of spatial econometric models lies in their ability to capture cross-country interdependence and spillover effects of explanatory variables.

The first essay employs a spatial autoregressive model and data on U.S. outbound FDI to investigate whether U.S. FDI into Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) depends on previous U.S. FDI in these regions. Additionally, the study investigates the …

Effects Of Early Round Venture Capital Syndication On Ipo Exits In Europe And The United States, Rosabella M. Magat

CMC Senior Theses

While the importance of venture capital (VC) can be highlighted by policy goals outlined in the 'Lisbon agenda', the European VC industry remains nascent in comparison to the more sophisticated VC market in the US. Researchers have identified key determinants that foster VC success on a broad level, and have often identified syndication as an important factor of success. This paper seeks to understand the role of syndication on the VC-backed company's success. I take a novel departure from past research in this area in three ways 1) I measure performance from the perspective of the portfolio company, rather than …

Finding Profitability Of Technical Trading Rules In Emerging Market Exchange Traded Funds, Austin P. Hallett

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis further investigates the effectiveness of 15 variable moving average strategies that mimic the trading rules used in the study by Brock, Lakonishok, and LeBaron (1992). Instead of applying these strategies to developed markets, unique characteristics of emerging markets offer opportunity to investors that warrant further research. Before transaction costs, all 15 variable moving average strategies outperform the naïve benchmark strategy of buying and holding different emerging market ETF's over the volatile period of 858 trading days. However, the variable moving averages perform poorly in the "bubble" market cycle. In fact, sell signals become more unprofitable than buy signals …

Carbon Affect On European Oil And Steel Companies: An Empirical Analysis On The Second Phase Eu Ets, Joseph Anderson

CMC Senior Theses

This paper uses timer series panel data from Bloomberg to ascertain the affects that carbon prices and other factors have on European oil and steel companies. This paper finds inconclusive evidence of carbon price return correlation with oil and steel company equity return. However it does find a strong positive correlation between the market portfolio excess return, which is the return on the DJS 600 EUR index minus the German three-month T-bill rate, and oil and steel excess equity return.

Bailing Out America: An Honors Thesis Addressing The Bailout And Financial Crisis Of 2008, Reuben Cash

Honors Theses

This paper analyzes the financial crisis of 2008 and the resulting government intervention of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or more generally called "the bailout." Beginning with historical context of past interventions, it sets forth an understanding of the economic environment of 2008. After explaining the mechanics of the financial crisis, it proposes that the reinsurance products underlying the financial markets in 2008 were based on unsound accounting and risk management principles. Based on this proposition, the representational faithfulness and fairness of mark-to-market accounting principles are examined. The paper concludes that a short-term financial focus is largely to blame for …

Discordant Regimes : The Interplay Between Mortgage And Bareboat Charter Registration, Ryan Acosta Federo

World Maritime University Dissertations

This dissertation discusses the implications of mortgage on bareboat charter registration with respect to the parties involved, hence, the Mortgagor, the Mortgagee, the Charterer and the Flag state. There are no certain international laws establishing the treatment of the rights of the parties to a defaulted mortgage on a bareboat charter registration. This paper provides an analysis of the current international conventions available for reference and of the application of laws by different jurisdictions on how such issues have been tackled. This paper provides an update on the current status of bareboat charter registration in the Philippines having its international …

An Examination Of Corporate Agribusiness Financial Performance: How Agribusinesses Perform Over Time And Under Various Conditions, Sierra J. Enlow

Theses and Dissertations--Agricultural Economics

While several studies examine the managerial structure of privately owned agribusinesses, few studies take a comprehensive look at publically traded agribusiness firms. Our study examines the historical position of agribusiness compared to the market, and then studies the impact of the global economic and financial crisis. The objective of this study is to pinpoint effects of corporate financial management strategies, commonly researched in financial literature on agribusiness firms’ performance. Through utilizing a quantile regression we find that agribusiness position in times of financial crisis is directly related to firm performance. As we examine internal factors, several interesting impacts of managerial …