Business Commons^™

Essays On Tax Impacts On Corporate Finance, Corporate Governance And Regional Disparity, Mei Li

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters that cover topics on tax impacts on corporate finance, regional disparity and corporate governance.

Chapter 1 - How Do Net Operating Loss Carryforwards Affect Tax Impact on Corporate Capital Structure? This paper examines the impact of net operating loss (NOL) carryforwards on the tax implications of corporate capital structure. Leveraging the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA), the largest tax reform in four decades, this paper investigates the effect of NOL carryforwards on firms' sensitivity to tax reforms. As NOL carryforwards have become increasingly significant since 2000, but not widely researched due …

Examination Of The Role Of Peer Effect On Board Diversity Among Us-Listed Companies, Liyang Wang

Olin Business School Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Traditionally, government mandates and investor activism influence board diversity in the United States. This study proposes peer effects as a third important determinant of board diversity. The results suggest that companies consider the progress made by their peers when deciding their own diversity. Interestingly, companies only match the performance of their peers and will spend comparable efforts in improving their diversity according to their peer's progress. Meanwhile, the peer effect has grown stronger in recent years, and companies are more likely to track the performance of mid-level peers. The results provide evidence on a new channel that can affect board …

Examination Of The Role Of Peer Effect On Board Diversity Among Us-Listed Companies, Liyang Wang

Olin Business School Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Traditionally, government mandates and investor activism influence board diversity in the United States. This study proposes peer effects as a third important determinant of board diversity. The results suggest that companies consider the progress made by their peers when deciding their own diversity. Interestingly, companies only match the performance of their peers and will spend comparable efforts in improving their diversity according to their peer's progress. Meanwhile, the peer effect has grown stronger in recent years, and companies are more likely to track the performance of mid-level peers. The results provide evidence on a new channel that can affect board …

Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy: Reasons, Effects, And Outcome, Christian J. Reller

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy was a major turning point during the 2008 Financial Crisis, and Lehman Brothers itself has become a prime example of regulatory failure since its closing. The demise of Lehman stemmed from the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. The deregulation of investment banking in the 1990s forged the way for new investment practices on Wall Street. The relaxation of rules allowed investment banks to be heavily invested in volatile assets. Lehman’s issues were an extremely high leverage ratio, illiquid assets, and poor corporate governance. An extremely high leverage ratio left Lehman susceptible to large movements in …

Are All Risks Created Equal? Rethinking The Distinction Between Legal And Business Risk In Corporate Law, Adi Libson, Gideon Parchomovsky

All Faculty Scholarship

Should corporate legal risk be treated similarly to corporate business risks? Currently, the law draws a clear-cut distinction between the two sources of risk, permitting the latter type of risk and banning the former. As a result, fiduciaries are shielded from personal liability in the case of business risk and are entirely exposed to civil and criminal liability that arises from legal risk-taking. As corporate law theorists have underscored, the differential treatment of business and legal risk is highly problematic from the perspective of firms and shareholders. To begin with, legal risk cannot be completely averted or eliminated. More importantly, …

Analisis Pengaruh Corporate Governance Dan Risk Management Committee Terhadap Financial Performance Pada Perusahaan Manufaktur Yang Terdaftar Di Bursa Efek Indonesia Tahun 2016-2020, Dhea Saummi Tasya, Imo Gandakusuma

Jurnal Manajemen dan Usahawan Indonesia

The aim of this study is to analyze the effect of corporate governance and risk management committee of manufacturing firms at the Indonesia Stock Exchange in 2016 – 2020. In 2016-2020, manufacturing companies were the highest contributors to national income, and financial performance fluctuated. Manufacturing companies do not yet have specific regulations governing corporate governance mechanisms, so this research is needed. The results of this study find that the existence of a risk management committee has insignificant on financial performance. The auditor reputation and the independence of the audit committee has insignificant on financial performance through the existence of a …

Biodiversity Disclosure Of Indonesian Companies And The Role Of The Board Of Commissioners, Ahmad Hambali, Desi Adhariani

Jurnal Akuntansi dan Keuangan Indonesia

The environmental damage that occurs on a large scale has an impact on reducing biodiversity. Biodiversity has an important role that is useful for human life and plays a central role in economic development. This condition makes various parties aware of their role in preventing further damage. Companies, whether directly or indirectly, owe a great deal to the environment. This study seeks to examine the role of the Board of Commissioners as proxied by the size of the Board of Commissioners, the proportion of Independent Boards, and the proportion of women on the Board of Commissioners as a corporate governance …

Theranos: Case Study And Examination Of The Fraud Triangle, Abbey Jennings

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

Fraud is a serious issue which carries significant implications. Fraud committed by top level managers is particularly grievous, as it ripples through a firm, harming the company’s shareholders, employees, and credibility, while posing a threat to individuals and society (Zahra, et al.). A common framework in auditing, the fraud triangle, outlines three factors that if present, increase the risk or enable fraud to occur. The three factors are incentive, opportunity, and rationalization to commit fraud (Barlow).

In 2018, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Elizabeth Holmes, founder and CEO of a supposedly groundbreaking health tech company, Theranos, with what …

Corporate Governance Attributes Of Board Independence And Board Education As Predictors Of Financial Performance Of Banks In South Sudan, Dier Tong Ngor-Chol

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Corporate governance has attracted much attention in the past few years due to cycles of corporate scandals and frauds that have resulted in momentous cases of financial failures and the collapse of some major corporations. Although the renewed interest in corporate governance has generated considerable insights and a better understanding of the prevailing corporate governance practices, much of this interest has concentrated on experiences in developed and emerging economies. There remains a significant lack of understanding of the practice and impact of corporate governance on firms’ performance in developing countries. This quantitative, nonexperimental study tested the predictive relationship between corporate …

Tax Avoidance, Corporate Governance, And Corporate Policies, Yang Yang

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This dissertation includes three essays examining the interactions between tax avoidance, corporate governance, and corporate policies. The first essay exploits corporate governance shocks induced by cross-listing in the U.S., and find that firms tend to engage in less tax avoidance after cross-listing. This effect is more pronounced for firms that experience significant improvements in corporate governance, and for firms from countries with weaker shareholder protection and disclosure requirements. Taken together, the results indicate that cross-listing in the U.S. helps align the interests of managers and shareholders and reduces managerial diversion.

The second essay examines the importance of tax avoidance to …

Reversing The Fortunes Of Active Funds, Adi Libson, Gideon Parchomovsky

All Faculty Scholarship

In 2019, for the first time in the history of U.S. capital markets, passive funds surpassed active funds in terms of total assets under management. The continuous growth of passive funds at the expense of active funds is a genuine cause for concern. Active funds monitor the management and partake of decision-making in their portfolio companies. Furthermore, they improve price efficiency and managerial performance by engaging in informed trading. The buy/sell decisions of active funds provide other market participants reliable information about the quality of firms. The cost of active investing is significant and it is exclusively borne by active …

Mapping The Knowledge Of Islamic Accounting Studies On Shariah Audit: A Bibliometric Analysis, Luqman Hakim Handoko, Sepky Mardian

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The issues of shariah audit appeared more than three decades ago along with the progress of the Islamic financial industries. But it is challenging to obtain a study explaining the current state of shariah audit research to date. Therefore, it is necessary to assess the research on the Shariah audit. Thus, this study aimed to analyze and visualize the current state of shariah audit using a bibliometric approach. The bibliometric analysis was conducted by using VOSviewer software. To fulfill this goal, the keywords such as shariah audit, shariah auditing, and its variations were searched from the Scopus database. The articles …

Market Effects Of Local Media Employment Reductions On The Idiosyncratic Risk Of Nearby Firms; Returns, Valuation, And Debt; And Firm Meet-Beat Behavior And Ceo Turnover And Compensation, C. Kyle Jones

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This research examines the effects of reductions in local and regional media employment on firms' information environment. A reduction in the number of local media employees available to provide coverage of firms is associated with persistent levels of increased idiosyncratic risk. The source of that firm-level risk appears to be increased estimation risk among investors, rather than decreased awareness about the investment opportunities or real effects on firms' product market competition. I also demonstrate that overall levels of local media coverage are associated with differences in returns similar to those associated with coverage in national outlets. While a reduction in …

Coporate Governance, Institutional Ownership, And The Decision To Pay The Amount Of Dividends: Evidence From Usa, John Obradovich, Amarjit Gill

John Obradovich

The decision to pay dividends is influenced by many financial factors. The purpose of this study is to find the relationships between corporate governance, institutional ownership, and the decision to pay dividends in American service firms. A sample of 296 American firms listed on New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) for a period of 3 years (from 2009-2011) was selected. This study applied a co-relational and non-experimental research design. The findings of this study indicate that the decision to pay dividends is a positive function of board size, CEO duality, and internationalization of the firm, and a negative function of institutional …

Activist Investors: A Corporate Social Responsibility Perspective On Hedge Fund Activism And The Need For Focus On All Stakeholders, Lucy Marie Ankenbauer

Honors Theses

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) can result in distinctly different visions when instituted under the enlightened stakeholder theory or the shareholder maximization theory. The critical variation between these two theories is the principal party that businesses consider when instituting strategic decisions. Firms following the enlightened stakeholder theory will base decisions on all the various stakeholders of the company and develop policies which increase long-term firm value. Companies pursuing shareholder value maximization will consider all strategies through the eyes of the stockholders and how these individuals will be affected. Neither theory is more valid than the other, since many factors must be …

You Can Run But You Can’T Hide: The Advance Of Shareholder Activism, Kendall Greenberg

CMC Senior Theses

Shareholder activism has exploded in popularity since the turn of the century, due in large part to impressive relative returns generated by its major participants. The result has thus been a surge in assets invested in the category, to in excess of $170 billion today up from less than $3 billion in 2000 (Inglis 2015; Romito 2015). This influx of capital, in absolute dollars and pace of growth, has caused many to wonder whether activists truly create shareholder value and, if so, if the value generated is sustainable. Numerous studies of activist interventions prior to 2009 reveal significant stock price …

Proxy Access And Optimal Standardization In Corporate Governance: An Empirical Analysis, Reilly S. Steel

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

According to the conventional wisdom, “one size does not fit all” in corporate governance. Firms are heterogeneous with respect to their governance needs, implying that the optimal corporate governance structure must also vary from firm to firm. This one-size-does-not-fit-all axiom has featured prominently in arguments against numerous corporate law regulatory initiatives, including the SEC’s failed Rule 14a-11—an attempt to impose mandatory, uniform “proxy access” on all public companies—which the D.C. Circuit struck down for inadequate cost–benefit analysis.

This Article presents an alternative theory as to the role of standardization in corporate governance—in which investors prefer standardized terms—and empirical …

The Impact Of Csr On Corporate Financial Performance, David K. Ding

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We provide one of the first analyses of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and firm performance using only annual financial reports. We document a link between corporate financial performance (CFP) and CSR, although this is not always positive. Specifically, we investigate whether CSR performance can be implied from financial reporting and provide evidence that CSR information implied by financial reports have a significant association with CFP. Furthermore, we provide the first comprehensive study of CSR reporting and link it with CFP in New Zealand.

Dividend Policy In A Frontier Market And Sector Equity Traded Funds In The United States, Abdulrahman Alharbi

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In chapter 1, we examine the nature and scale of the relationship between returns on sector Equity Traded Funds (ETFs) and their volatility. We discuss the source and direction of the effect between returns and risk and whether behavioral biases are prominent among sector ETFs. The study has implications for financial sector practitioners and investors, as it provides more information about the risk in sector ETF and whether that risk differs from that of other investment instruments. To this end, we test three hypotheses based on the relevant literature on volatility and returns: the leverage effect hypothesis, feedback hypothesis, and …

Powerful Blockholders And Ceo Turnover, Chi Shen Wei, Lei Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We identify the power of institutional blockholders to influence management using previous occurrences of forced CEO turnover at other firms in the blockholders’ overall portfolio. We create a “powerful blockholder linkage” measure that strongly predicts future forced CEO turnover. These effects are larger when “powerful” blockholders are more motivated to monitor and when they have had valuable monitoring experience. Moreover, firms with powerful blockholders display higher CEO turnover-performance sensitivity, pursue more value-increasing mergers, and have higher firm value. Overall, our results suggest that an identifiable group of powerful blockholders play an important role in corporate governance.

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.

Quasi-Appraisal: Appraising Breach Of Duty Of Disclosure Claims Following "Cash-Out" Mergers In Delaware, Zachary A. Paiva

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

In recent years, Delaware has served as the hot bed for the dramatic increase in merger appraisal litigation and the proliferation of “appraisal arbitrage” whereby opportunistic shareholders buy into companies following merger announcements and challenge announced deal prices as an investment strategy. While this has not always proved profitable, it has increased scrutiny over the Delaware appraisal regime and the ability for shareholders to avail themselves of the opportunity for a judicial valuation of their shares. Furthermore, it has highlighted information asymmetries in which controlling shareholders, particularly those seeking to cash out their minority shareholders, are incentivized to underpay or …

Do Government Linked Companies Hold More Cash?, Chenxi Liu, Kian Leong Nelson Yap, Sili Zhou

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In this paper, we investigate the cash holings of government linked corporations (GLCs) in Singapore, with different levels of Temasek Holdings ownership. We find evidence that Temasek owned public firms hold on average substantially more cash than otherwise similar public firms listed on SGX. This result is robust to different measures of Temasek ownership. We also show that when GLCs have excess cash, they do not spend it on capital expenditure, acquisition, dividends or share repurchase. Instead, they hoard these excess cash leading to an accumulation of cash. In addition, we show that Temasek firms are on average more profitable, …

Two Essays In Corporate Finance: The Effects Of Ownership And Governance On A Firm's Innovation And Capital Structure Decisions, Zhengyi Zhang

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In the first chapter, we assess the effect of changes of government ownership on corporate innovation activities. Across 58 non-US countries, treatment firms’ innovation, both in quantity and quality, decrease after a governmental acquisition by using a difference-in-difference regressions and propensity score matching. We show that there is conflict of interest between major shareholders and minor shareholders. The corporate innovation efficiency also decline after the government acquisition. We find that this negative relationship is more severe for the group with higher government ownership of banks, better creditor rights and worse stock market development.

For second chapter, if the optimal capital …

Role Of Inside Directors In Mitigating Negative Effects Of Outside Directors’ Busyness, Syed Mainuddin Kamal

Doctoral Dissertations

In this study, I investigate the effect of outside directors’ busyness on firm performance, and how the presence of a certified inside director (CID) on the board alters the busyness effect. Busy outside directors are over-stretched to provide adequate monitoring. Certified inside directors (CIDs), inside directors holding a directorship at an unaffiliated firm, have director labor market incentives to focus on their own firm’s performance and share firm-specific information to outside directors for effective monitoring. I find that the negative effect of outside directors’ busyness on firm performance is mitigated when a firm’s board includes a certified inside director (CID). …

Nigerian Banking Governance, Leadership Style, And Performance During The 2008-2009 Financial Crisis, Adeola Oluwayemi Agbato

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The 2008-2009 global financial crisis of financial systems negatively affected about 30% of Nigerian banks, leading to profitability issues. The profitability issues led to operational challenges, downsizing, and liquidation of some banks. The purpose of this correlational study was to examine the relationship between corporate governance structure, perception of leadership style, and bank performance. This study was grounded in agency theory and used survey and archival data. Survey data were collected from 11 participants employed by commercial banks located in Nigeria, using the Multifaceted Leadership Questionnaire. Corporate governance and bank performance data were collected from annual bank reports. The model …

Corporate Governance Issues In The Nigerian Banking Industry, Oyebola Bejide Akande

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Corporate governance issues resulting from bad governance, fraudulent activities, insider abuse, and corruption have attracted the attention of shareholders and regulators in the banking industry. The financial crisis that erupted from the United States affected the financial institutions of both developed and developing countries, among which Nigerian banks belong. The Central Bank of Nigeria removed 8 managing directors and executive directors due to bad governance, nonperforming loans of 61%, and toxic assets of $13.3 billion; the Central Bank injected 620 billion naira into the banks. The purpose of this multiple case study was to develop an understanding of corporate governance …

Open Market Share Repurchase Programs And Corporate Governance: Company Performance, Gary Caton, Jeremy Goh, Yen Teik Lee, Scott C. Linn

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Payout policies based on share repurchase programs provide greater flexibility than do those based on cash dividends. We develop and test an empirical model in which strongly-governed companies outperform weakly-governed companies after announcing share repurchase programs. Our findings include positive associations between strong governance and both post-announcement adjusted operating performance and abnormal stock returns. The results are robust to sample selection bias, different sample criteria, governance measurement, and various control variables. In addition, governance strength is associated with larger post-announcement changes in CEO incentive compensation and merger and acquisition activity, both of which we argue are consistent with strongly-governed companies …

When Less Is More: The Benefit Of Limits On Executive Pay, Peter Cebon, Benjamin Hermalin

Peter Cebon

We derive conditions under which limits on executive compensation can enhance efficiency and benefit shareholders (but not executives). Having their hands tied in the future allows a board of directors to credibly enter into relational contracts with executives that are more efficient than performance-contingent contracts. This has implications for the ideal composition of the board. The analysis also offers insights into the political economy of executive-compensation reform.

Governance Matter: Morningstar Stewardship Grades And Mutual Fund Performance, Jerry X. Cao, Aurobindo Ghosh, Jeremy Goh, Wee Seng Ng

Research Collection School Of Economics

Mutual fund investors have the arduous task of disentangling luck from ability of mutual fund managers’ performance. In this paper we investigate the role of mutual fund corporate governance (measured by Morningstar Stewardship grade) in mutual fund performance. We propose an objective data-driven corporate governance score based on principal components of Morningstar Stewardship Grades. Furthermore, we establish corporate governance scores have Granger Causality on long-term risk-adjusted returns. The findings suggest that corporate governance grades of mutual funds carry information content beyond the usual star rating measures for predicting long-term mutual fund performance and provide an effective tool for selecting funds.