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Singapore Management University

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Full-Text Articles in Corporate Finance

Managerial Incentives And Management Forecast Precision, Qiang Cheng, Ting Luo, Heng Yue Sep 2013

Managerial Incentives And Management Forecast Precision, Qiang Cheng, Ting Luo, Heng Yue

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Managers have great discretion in determining forecast characteristics, but little is known about how managerial incentives affect these characteristics. This paper examines whether managers strategically choose forecast precision for self-serving purposes. Building on the prior finding that the market reaction to vague forecasts is weaker than its reaction to precise forecasts, we find that for management forecasts disclosed before insider sales, more positive (negative) news forecasts are more (less) precise than other management forecasts. The opposite applies to management forecasts disclosed before insider purchases. These results are consistent with managers strategically choosing forecast precision to increase stock prices before insider …


Non-Audit Fees, Institutional Monitoring, And Audit Quality, Chee Yeow Lim, David K. Ding, Charlie Charoenwong Aug 2013

Non-Audit Fees, Institutional Monitoring, And Audit Quality, Chee Yeow Lim, David K. Ding, Charlie Charoenwong

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We posit that the effect of non-audit fees on audit quality is conditional on the extent of institutional monitoring. We suggest that institutional investors have incentives and the ability to monitor financial reporting quality. Because of the reputation concerns and potential litigation exposure, auditors are likely to provide high audit quality, when they also provide non-audit services to clients, particularly when clients are subject to high institutional monitoring. We find evidence that, as non-audit fees increase, audit quality (measured by performance-adjusted discretionary current accruals and earnings-response coefficients) reduces only for clients with low institutional ownership but not for clients with …


The Effect Of Corporate Tax Avoidance On The Cost Of Equity, Beng Wee Goh, Jimmy Lee, Chee Yeow Lim, Terry Shevlin Aug 2013

The Effect Of Corporate Tax Avoidance On The Cost Of Equity, Beng Wee Goh, Jimmy Lee, Chee Yeow Lim, Terry Shevlin

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

While prior studies have examined how investors perceive extreme forms of tax avoidance behavior such as tax sheltering and uncertain tax position (e.g., Hanlon and Slemrod 2009; Wilson 2009; Koester 2011; Hutchens and Rego 2012), there is little evidence on how investors perceive less extreme forms of tax avoidance. This study fills this void by examining the relation between firm’s cost of equity and corporate tax avoidance using three measures that capture less extreme forms of corporate tax avoidance: book-tax differences, permanent book-tax differences, and long-run cash effective tax rates. We find that less aggressive forms of corporate tax avoidance …


Work Out Optimum Tax Rates, Benefits For A New Business, Teng Aun Khoo, Clement Tan Kai Guan Aug 2013

Work Out Optimum Tax Rates, Benefits For A New Business, Teng Aun Khoo, Clement Tan Kai Guan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

No abstract provided.


Do Firms Hedge Optimally? Evidence From An Exogenous Governance Change, Sterling Zhenrui Huang, Urs Peyer, Benjamin Segal Aug 2013

Do Firms Hedge Optimally? Evidence From An Exogenous Governance Change, Sterling Zhenrui Huang, Urs Peyer, Benjamin Segal

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We ask whether firms hedge optimally by analyzing the impact the NYSE/NASDAQ listing rule changes have had, which exogenously imposed board composition changes on a subset of firms, on financial risk management. Using new proxies for the extent of financial risk management in non-financial firms we find that treated firms reduce their financial hedging, in a difference-in-difference framework. The reduction is concentrated in firms with higher conflicts of interests, such as a high CEO equity ownership level, which exposes them to more idiosyncratic risk, and a higher occurrence of option backdating. We reject the hypothesis that newly majority-independent boards reduce …


Internal Governance And Real Earnings Management, Qiang Cheng, Jimmy Lee, Terry J. Shevlin Aug 2013

Internal Governance And Real Earnings Management, Qiang Cheng, Jimmy Lee, Terry J. Shevlin

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine whether internal governance affects the extent of real earnings management. Internal governance refers to the process through which key subordinate executives provide checks and balances in the organization and affect corporate decisions. Using the number of years to retirement to capture key subordinate executives’ incentives and using their compensation relative to CEO compensation to capture their influence within the firm, we find that the extent of real earnings management decreases with key subordinate executives’ horizon and influence. In cross-sectional analyses, we find that the impact of internal governance is more important for firms with more complex operations where …


Getting Your Accounting Right, Themin Suwardy, Jiwei Wang Aug 2013

Getting Your Accounting Right, Themin Suwardy, Jiwei Wang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

The book brings together authors from the industry and the academic world to contribute articles on the topic of high quality financial reporting. The objective is to help business directors and accounts preparers to understand the importance of high quality financial reporting to their business and get it right from the start.


Political Connection And Firm Value, James S. Ang, David K. Ding, Tiong Yang Thong Aug 2013

Political Connection And Firm Value, James S. Ang, David K. Ding, Tiong Yang Thong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We study the effect of political connection (PC) on company value in an environment where low PC is due to better institutions and not confounded by favorable social/cultural factors. We find that in Singapore, the only country that fits this description, PC in general adds little to the value of a company. However, in industries that are subject to more stringent government regulations, PC appears to be somewhat important. Robustness checks show that alternative PC variables give rise to similar results, and the addition of control variables do not drastically change the findings. Politically connected firms have higher managerial ownership …


How Capital Structure Influences Diversification Performance: A Transaction Cost Perspective, Jonathan O'Brien, Parthiban David, Toru Yoshikawa, Andrew Delios Jul 2013

How Capital Structure Influences Diversification Performance: A Transaction Cost Perspective, Jonathan O'Brien, Parthiban David, Toru Yoshikawa, Andrew Delios

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Extant theories agree that debt should inhibit diversification, but predict opposing performance consequences. While agency theory predicts that debt should lead to higher performance for diversifying firms, transaction cost economics (TCE) predicts that more debt will lead to lower performance for firms expanding into new markets. Our empirical tests on a large sample of Japanese firms support TCE by showing that firms accrue higher returns from leveraging their resources and capabilities into new markets when managers are shielded from the rigors of the market governance of debt, particularly bond debt. Furthermore, we find that the detrimental effects of debt are …


Acquisitions Driven By Stock Overvaluation: Are They Good Deals?, Fangjian Fu, Leming Lin, Micah Officer Jul 2013

Acquisitions Driven By Stock Overvaluation: Are They Good Deals?, Fangjian Fu, Leming Lin, Micah Officer

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Theory and recent evidence suggest that overvalued firms can create value for shareholders if they exploit their overvaluation by using their stock as currency to purchase less overvalued firms. We challenge this idea and show that, in practice, overvalued acquirers significantly overpay for their targets. These acquisitions do not, in turn, lead to synergy gains. Moreover, these acquisitions seem to be concentrated among acquirers with the largest governance problems. CEO compensation, not shareholder value creation, appears to be the main motive behind acquisitions by overvalued acquirers.


Are Investors' Corporate Site Visits Informative?, Qiang Cheng, Fei Du, Xin Wang, Yutao Wang Jun 2013

Are Investors' Corporate Site Visits Informative?, Qiang Cheng, Fei Du, Xin Wang, Yutao Wang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Corporate site visit is an important type of investors’ information acquisition activities, but its usefulness is not well understood in the literature, partially due to the lack of data. Using a unique dataset of corporate site visits in China, we analyze the information content and the determinants of corporate site visits. Our main findings are as follows. First, we document a significant market reaction to corporate site visits and the market reaction is stronger for group visits, for visits conducted by mutual fund managers, for visits covering firm-specific topics, and for firms with poorer information environment. Second, we find that …


Which Board Interlocks Matter? The Impact Of Managerial Power, Legitimacy, And Family Power On The Adoption Of Stock Option Pay, Toru Yoshikawa, Jung Wook Shim, A. Tuschke Jun 2013

Which Board Interlocks Matter? The Impact Of Managerial Power, Legitimacy, And Family Power On The Adoption Of Stock Option Pay, Toru Yoshikawa, Jung Wook Shim, A. Tuschke

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Inter-organizational relationships and the networks they create are an important mechanism for the transfer of knowledge and learning. Network ties enable the transfer of experiential knowledge – for instance of vicarious information through board interlocks. While we know that organizational learning occurs and is influenced by factors like the strength of ties and a firm’s position in the network, it is still unclear what causes the firm to act on the information gained through network ties. We build on prior studies on the impact of interlocking board ties ion the adoption of new practices and analyze the effects of different …


Accounting Restatements And External Financing Choices, Xia Chen, Qiang Cheng, Alvis Lo Jun 2013

Accounting Restatements And External Financing Choices, Xia Chen, Qiang Cheng, Alvis Lo

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

There is little research on how accounting information quality affects a firm’s external financing choices. In this paper, we use the occurrence of accounting restatements as a proxy for the reduced credibility of accounting information and investigate how restatements affect a firm’s external financing choices. We find that for firms that obtain external financing after restatements, they rely more on debt financing, especially private debt financing, and less on equity financing. The increase in debt financing is more pronounced for firms with more severe information problems and less pronounced for firms with prompt CEO/CFO turnover and auditor dismissal. Our evidence …


Are Investors' Corporate Site Visits Informative?, Qiang Cheng, Fei Du, Xin Wang, Yutao Wang Jun 2013

Are Investors' Corporate Site Visits Informative?, Qiang Cheng, Fei Du, Xin Wang, Yutao Wang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Corporate site visit is an important type of investors’ information acquisition activities, but its usefulness is not well understood in the literature, partially due to the lack of data. Using a unique dataset of corporate site visits in China, we analyze the information content and the determinants of corporate site visits. Our main findings are as follows. First, we document a significant market reaction to corporate site visits and the market reaction is stronger for group visits, for visits conducted by mutual fund managers, for visits covering firm-specific topics, and for firms with poorer information environment. Second, we find that …


When The Pcaob Talks, Who Listens? Evidence From Stakeholder Reaction To Gaap-Deficient Pcaob Inspection Reports Of Small Auditors, Lawrence J. Abbott, Katherine A. Gunny, Tracey Chunqi Zhang May 2013

When The Pcaob Talks, Who Listens? Evidence From Stakeholder Reaction To Gaap-Deficient Pcaob Inspection Reports Of Small Auditors, Lawrence J. Abbott, Katherine A. Gunny, Tracey Chunqi Zhang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Section 104 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) created the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB). The PCAOB conducts inspections of registered public accounting firms that provide audits for publicly traded companies. The results of the inspection process are summarized in publicly available reports at the PCAOB website. Using these reports, we categorize the inspection reports into three levels of increasing severity: clean, GAAS-deficient, and GAAP-deficient. We examine the potential use of GAAP-deficient PCAOB inspection reports as perceived audit quality signals for the clients of GAAP-deficient auditors that are inspected on a triennial basis by the PCAOB. Our investigation is predicated …


The Liability Of Foreignness In International Equity Investments: Evidence From The U.S. Stock Market, Bok Baik, Jun-Koo Kang, Jin-Mo Kim, Joonho Lee May 2013

The Liability Of Foreignness In International Equity Investments: Evidence From The U.S. Stock Market, Bok Baik, Jun-Koo Kang, Jin-Mo Kim, Joonho Lee

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Using foreign institutional ownership data in the US from 1990 to 2007, we examine whether foreign institutional investors face liabilities of foreignness (LOF) in the US stock market. We find that foreign institutional investors prefer low information asymmetry stocks more than domestic institutional investors do, and this preference for low information asymmetry stocks is particularly strong among foreign institutional investors from countries with high LOF. More importantly, we find that a change in foreign institutional ownership is negatively related to future returns, whereas this relation does not exist for domestic institutional ownership. The negative relation between the change in foreign …


How Important Are Earnings Announcements As An Information Source?, Sudipta Basu, Truong Duong, Stanimir Markov, Eng Joo Tan May 2013

How Important Are Earnings Announcements As An Information Source?, Sudipta Basu, Truong Duong, Stanimir Markov, Eng Joo Tan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In a competitive information market, no single information source is likely to dominate all other sources collectively, but a single source can dominate all or most other sources individually. We explore whether earnings announcements constitute such a dominant source using Ball and Shivakumar’s R2 metric: the proportion of the variation in annual returns explained by earnings announcement returns. We find that earnings announcement R2 is 11% -- higher than the corresponding R2 of returns on days with dividend announcements, management forecasts, preannouncements, 10-K and 10-Q filings and amendments. Only the four largest realized absolute daily returns in a year match …


Social Capital, Informal Governance, And Post-Ipo Firm Performance: A Study Of Chinese Entrepreneurial Firms, Jerry X. Cao, Yuan Ding, Hua Zhang Apr 2013

Social Capital, Informal Governance, And Post-Ipo Firm Performance: A Study Of Chinese Entrepreneurial Firms, Jerry X. Cao, Yuan Ding, Hua Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper explores the links between entrepreneurs' social capital and post-IPO firm performance in China's unique capital market and regulatory setting. Using hand-collected data on entrepreneurs' political connections and firm financial information, we construct original measures for various types of social capital and examine their roles in determining the accounting and financial performance of entrepreneurial firms after an IPO. On one hand, firm accounting performance is enhanced by entrepreneurs' bridging social capital, such as political connections or a willingness to share power with external investors. On the other hand, bonding social capital such as intra-group related party transactions causes performance …


Pcaob Inspection Reports And Audit Quality, Katherine A. Gunny, Tracey Chunqi Zhang Mar 2013

Pcaob Inspection Reports And Audit Quality, Katherine A. Gunny, Tracey Chunqi Zhang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

With the creation of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), audit firm oversight shifted away from self-regulation to independent regulation. The inspections program is the central feature of the PCAOB. We examine whether PCAOB inspections are able to distinguish actual audit quality (as opposed to perceived) during the period inspected to better understand this important regulatory tool. We use three measures that proxy for actual audit quality: abnormal accruals, restatements, and the propensity to issue a going concern opinion. For triennially inspected auditors, we find that PCAOB inspections are associated with lower audit quality when the reports are seriously …


Corporate Governance: The Role Of Independent Directors, Singapore Management University Jan 2013

Corporate Governance: The Role Of Independent Directors, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Companies in Singapore may now have to spend more time and resources to look for independent directors for their firms after the recent revised Corporate Governance Code, but the efforts will be worth it, said Jeremy Goh, associate professor of finance at SMU at a panel discussion during the 3rd Singapore Corporate Governance Week.


Managerial Incentives And Management Forecast Precision, Qiang Cheng, Ting Luo, Heng Yue Jan 2013

Managerial Incentives And Management Forecast Precision, Qiang Cheng, Ting Luo, Heng Yue

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Managers have great discretion in determining management forecast characteristics, but little is known about how managerial incentives affect these characteristics. In this paper, we examine whether managers strategically choose the precision of their earnings forecasts for self-serving purposes. Building on prior research demonstrating that the market reaction to vague management forecasts is weaker than its reaction to precise forecasts, we find that for management forecasts disclosed before insider sales, more positive (negative) news forecasts are more (less) precise than other management forecasts. The opposite applies to management forecasts disclosed before insider purchases. These results are consistent with managers strategically choosing …


The Impact Of Sfas133 On Income Smoothing By Banks Through Loan Loss Provisions, Emre Kilic, Gerald J. Lobo, Tharindra Ranasinghe, K. Sivaramakrishnan Jan 2013

The Impact Of Sfas133 On Income Smoothing By Banks Through Loan Loss Provisions, Emre Kilic, Gerald J. Lobo, Tharindra Ranasinghe, K. Sivaramakrishnan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine the impact of SFAS 133, Accounting for Derivative Instruments and Hedging Activities, on the reporting behavior of commercial banks and the informativeness of their financial statements. We argue that because the stricter recognition and classification requirements of SFAS 133 reduced banks' ability to smooth income through derivatives, banks more affected by SFAS 133 will rely more on loan loss provisions to smooth income. We find evidence consistent with this argument. We also find that the increased reliance on loan loss provisions for smoothing income has impaired the informativeness of loan loss provisions.


How Does Culture Influence Corporate Risk-Taking?, Kai Li, Dale Griffin, Heng Yue, Longkai Zhao Jan 2013

How Does Culture Influence Corporate Risk-Taking?, Kai Li, Dale Griffin, Heng Yue, Longkai Zhao

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We investigate the role of national culture in corporate risk-taking. We postulate that culture influencescorporate risk-taking both through its effect on managerial decision-making and through its effect on acountry’s formal institutions. Further, we postulate that the influence of culture is conditioned on theextent of managerial discretion as measured by earnings discretion and firm size. Using firm-level datafrom 35 countries and employing a hierarchical linear modeling approach to isolate the effects of firmleveland country-level variables, we show that individualism has a positive and significant association,whereas uncertainty avoidance and harmony have negative and significant associations, with corporaterisk-taking. Greater earnings discretion strengthens and …


The Opportunistic Reporting Of Material Events And The Apparent Misconception Of Investors' Reaction, Dan Segal, Benjamin Segal Jan 2013

The Opportunistic Reporting Of Material Events And The Apparent Misconception Of Investors' Reaction, Dan Segal, Benjamin Segal

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Using a comprehensive sample of non-earnings 8-K filings from 1996 to 2011, we examine whether firms engage in opportunistic reporting of mandatory and voluntary news. We find strong evidence of opportunistic reporting of negative news, especially among public firms. Public firms are more likely to delay disclosure of negative news, report negative news after trading hours, and report on the last day of the week. We also find evidence of opportunistic bundling of news. Our findings support the notion that managers engage in strategic disclosure by delaying or obfuscating negative news in order to mitigate the potential market reaction. Factors …


Banks' Survival During The Financial Crisis: The Role Of Regulatory Reporting Quality, Jeffrey Ng, Tjomme O. Rusticus Dec 2012

Banks' Survival During The Financial Crisis: The Role Of Regulatory Reporting Quality, Jeffrey Ng, Tjomme O. Rusticus

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In this paper, we investigate the effect of bank transparency before the crisis on bank stability during the financial crisis that erupted in 2008. Using a large sample of private and public commercial banks in the United States, we find that transparency enhances stability. We use two measures of transparency. We develop a new measure of financial reporting transparency based on loan loss provision estimation errors. We corroborate our findings using a second measure based on the incidence of accounting restatements. We show that lower transparency before the crisis is associated with higher non-performing loans and lower profitability at the …


Can Us Economic Variables Predict Chinese Stock Market?, Jeremy Goh, Fuwei Jiang, Jun Tu, Yuchen Wang Nov 2012

Can Us Economic Variables Predict Chinese Stock Market?, Jeremy Goh, Fuwei Jiang, Jun Tu, Yuchen Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In the last few decades, we observed a significant increase in global economic activities and these activities may have an impact on both China's economy and stock market. Given the potential impact, we empirically examine whether US economic variables are leading indicators of the Chinese stock market. Prior to China joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) in the end of 2001, we find no statistical relationship between US economic variables and the Chinese stock market returns. However, we find US economic variables have statistically significant predictive power for periods after China's admission into the WTO. In addition, we show that …


Building The Cfo Function: Roles And Responsibilities, Andrew Lee, Tracey Zhang Nov 2012

Building The Cfo Function: Roles And Responsibilities, Andrew Lee, Tracey Zhang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In May 2012, the Singapore CFO Institute, in collaboration with the School of Accountancy at Singapore Management University (SMU), embarked on this study with the objective of achieving a better understanding of the CFO function in today’s modern corporation. The study aims to answer a fundamental question – what do CFOs actually do? We examined several facets to this question: the key roles and responsibilities of CFOs; how those responsibilities are structured; whether those roles have changed in importance over time; what roles occupy the most of the CFOs’ attention and time; and what factors are challenging or enhancing the …


Building The Cfo Function: Roles And Responsibilities, Andrew Lee Nov 2012

Building The Cfo Function: Roles And Responsibilities, Andrew Lee

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

No abstract provided.


Sgx Listing Rule 1207(10): Challenges And Opportunities For Caes, See Liang Foo Oct 2012

Sgx Listing Rule 1207(10): Challenges And Opportunities For Caes, See Liang Foo

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

No abstract provided.


Raising The Bar, Jiwei Wang Oct 2012

Raising The Bar, Jiwei Wang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

No abstract provided.