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Research Collection School Of Accountancy

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Full-Text Articles in Corporate Finance

Default Clauses In Debt Contracts, Ningzhong Li, Yun Lou, Florin Vasvari Aug 2015

Default Clauses In Debt Contracts, Ningzhong Li, Yun Lou, Florin Vasvari

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine the determinants of events of default clauses in syndicated loan and bond contracts, provi- sions that allow lenders to request the repayment of principal and to terminate lending commitments. We document significant variation in the use of default clauses and their restrictiveness within the same type of lending contract but also across loans and bonds. We find that default clauses in public bond contracts are less restrictive than those in syndicated loan contracts. We also document that two ex ante proxies for bankruptcy costs, the level of intangible assets and capitalized research and development expenditures at the time …


Opaque Financial Reporting Due To Unemployment Concerns, Jeffrey Ng, Tharindra Ranasinghe, Guifeng Shi, Holly I. Yang Aug 2015

Opaque Financial Reporting Due To Unemployment Concerns, Jeffrey Ng, Tharindra Ranasinghe, Guifeng Shi, Holly I. Yang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This paper examines the link between rank-and-file employees’ unemployment concerns and financial reporting opacity. Following Agrawal and Matsa (JFE, 2013), we use exogenous variations in state unemployment insurance benefits to capture changes to unemployment concerns. We find that when unemployment concerns are lower, there is less opaque financial reporting. This relation is stronger when workers face higher unemployment risk, labor union participation is high, and executives have higher equity incentives. Using Tobin’s Q to capture firm value, we also find that the economic rationale to engage in opaque financial reporting reduces when unemployment benefits are high. Our findings suggest that …


Opaque Financial Reporting Due To Unemployment Concerns, Jeffrey Ng, Tharindra Ranasinghe, Guifeng Shi, Holly I. Yang Jul 2015

Opaque Financial Reporting Due To Unemployment Concerns, Jeffrey Ng, Tharindra Ranasinghe, Guifeng Shi, Holly I. Yang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This paper examines the link between rank-and-file employees’ unemployment concerns and financial reporting opacity. Following Agrawal and Matsa (JFE, 2013), we use exogenous variations in state unemployment insurance benefits to capture changes to unemployment concerns. We find that when unemployment concerns are lower, there is less opaque financial reporting. This relation is stronger when workers face higher unemployment risk, labor union participation is high, and executives have higher equity incentives. Using Tobin’s Q to capture firm value, we also find that the economic rationale to engage in opaque financial reporting reduces when unemployment benefits are high. Our findings suggest that …


Data And Analytics In Corporate Real Estate: Do You Have The Right Talent?, Clarence Goh Jul 2015

Data And Analytics In Corporate Real Estate: Do You Have The Right Talent?, Clarence Goh

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Is the lack of suitable data and analytics talent in your corporate real estate (CRE) team preventing you from contributing to the wider business strategy?


Fair Value Hierarchy Measures: Post-Implementation Evidence On Ifrs 7, Pearl Tan Jul 2015

Fair Value Hierarchy Measures: Post-Implementation Evidence On Ifrs 7, Pearl Tan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Using a balance sheet valuation model, this study examines if information on the fair value hierarchy of on-balance sheet financial assets and financial liabilities are incorporated in the market’s valuation of companies’ equities in Singapore. The results of the study show significant associations between as-reported Level 1 and Level 2 fair value measures of financial assets and market values. However, the results are not significant for Level 3 fair value measures of financial assets and each of the three levels of fair value measures of financial liabilities. The results also show that returns are more positively associated with as-reported gains …


Customer's Short Positions And Supplier's Investment Decisions, Xia Chen, Guojin Gong, Shuqing Luo Jul 2015

Customer's Short Positions And Supplier's Investment Decisions, Xia Chen, Guojin Gong, Shuqing Luo

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Short interest contains valuable information about a firm’s business fundamentals. We investigate whether such information affects business partners’ real investment decisions in the supply-chain setting. We predict and find that a supplier’s future investments (including inventory, R&D, and tangible asset investments) decrease with its customer’s current short interest. This negative relation is stronger when the supplier faces greater difficulty in assessing its customer’s business fundamentals and when short interest is more likely to indicate longlasting deterioration in the customer’s fundamentals. Additional analysis does not support the alternative explanation that the supplier adjusts investments in response to unfavorable information obtained via …


Does Increased Board Independence Reduce Earnings Management? Evidence From Recent Regulatory Reforms, Qiang Cheng, Xia Chen, Xin Wang Jun 2015

Does Increased Board Independence Reduce Earnings Management? Evidence From Recent Regulatory Reforms, Qiang Cheng, Xia Chen, Xin Wang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In this paper, we examine whether recent regulatory reforms requiring majority board independence are effective in reducing earnings management. Firms that did not have a majority of independent directors prior to the reforms (referred to as non-compliance firms) are required to increase their board independence. We find that overall, compared to the other firms, noncompliance firms do not experience a significant decrease in the extent of earnings management from prior to the reforms to afterwards. However, we find that non-compliance firms with low information acquisition cost experience a significant reduction in earnings management compared with the other firms. The results …


Does Increased Board Independence Reduce Earnings Management? Evidence From The Recent Regulatory Reform, Xia Chen, Qiang Cheng, Xin Wang Jun 2015

Does Increased Board Independence Reduce Earnings Management? Evidence From The Recent Regulatory Reform, Xia Chen, Qiang Cheng, Xin Wang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine whether recent regulatory reforms requiring majority board independence reduce the extent of earnings management. Firms that did not have a majority of independent directors before the reforms (referred to as noncompliant firms) are required to increase their board independence. We find that, while noncompliant firms on average do not experience a significant decrease in earnings management after the reforms compared to other firms, noncompliant firms with low information acquisition cost experience a significant reduction in earnings management. The results are similar when we examine audit committee independence and when we use alternative proxies for information acquisition cost and …


An Investigation Of Credit Borrower Concentration, Heng Yue, Pingui Rao, Jigao Zhu May 2015

An Investigation Of Credit Borrower Concentration, Heng Yue, Pingui Rao, Jigao Zhu

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Credit borrower concentration arises when a bank or financial institution lends a large amount of its funds to a few large borrowers. We find that borrower concentration is positively related to non-performing loans and negatively related to financial performance. We also find that the voting power of bank’s controlling shareholder is positively related to the borrower concentration. The evidence is consistent with the view that controlling shareholders divert resources away from banks by extending a high volume of loans to a few related parties, which leads to high borrower concentration. Further evidence indicates that some seemingly unrelated large borrowers, as …


Investment, Duration, And Exit Strategies For Corporate And Independent Venture Capital-Backed Start-Ups, Bing Guo, Yun Lou, David Perez-Castrillo May 2015

Investment, Duration, And Exit Strategies For Corporate And Independent Venture Capital-Backed Start-Ups, Bing Guo, Yun Lou, David Perez-Castrillo

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We propose a model of investment, duration, and exit strategies for start-ups backed by venture capital (VC) funds that accounts for the high level of uncertainty, the asymmetry of information between insiders and outsiders, and the discount rate. Our analysis predicts that start-ups backed by corporate VC funds remain for a longer period of time before exiting and receive larger investment amounts than those financed by independent VC funds. Although a longer duration leads to a higher likelihood of an exit through an acquisition, a larger investment increases the probability of an IPO exit. These predictions find strong empirical support.


Corporate Tax Aggressiveness And Managerial Rent Extraction: Evidence From Insider Trading, Sung Gon Chung, Beng Wee Goh, Kiat Bee Jimmy Lee, Terry J. Shevlin May 2015

Corporate Tax Aggressiveness And Managerial Rent Extraction: Evidence From Insider Trading, Sung Gon Chung, Beng Wee Goh, Kiat Bee Jimmy Lee, Terry J. Shevlin

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Recent studies argue that aggressive forms of tax avoidance can be used to facilitate managerial rent extraction from shareholders (e.g., Desai 2004; Desai and Dharmapala 2006; Desai et al. 2007). Despite this agency view of tax avoidance receiving increasing attention in the literature, there is limited empirical evidence that managers actually extract rents generated from tax avoidance activities. In this paper, we examine the association between corporate tax aggressiveness and managerial rent extraction in the form of insider trading profitability. We document that, on average, insider purchase profitability, but not sale profitability, is significantly higher in more tax aggressive firms. …


Internal Control And Operational Efficiency, Qiang Cheng, Beng Wee Goh, Jae Bum Kim Apr 2015

Internal Control And Operational Efficiency, Qiang Cheng, Beng Wee Goh, Jae Bum Kim

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In this study, we examine whether and how internal control over financial reporting affects firm operational efficiency. We find that operational efficiency, derived from the frontier analysis, is significantly lower among firms with material weaknesses in internal control relative to firms without such weaknesses. We document some evidence suggesting that effective internal control leads to greater operational efficiency through reducing the likelihood of misappropriation of corporate resources and through enhancing the quality of internal reports for decision making. We also document that smaller firms benefit more from having effective internal control in terms of operational efficiency. In addition, we find …


Audit Committees And Financial Reporting Quality In Singapore, Kwong Sin Leong, Jiwei Wang, Themin Suwardy, Yuanto Kusnadi Apr 2015

Audit Committees And Financial Reporting Quality In Singapore, Kwong Sin Leong, Jiwei Wang, Themin Suwardy, Yuanto Kusnadi

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

No abstract provided.


Financial Health And Corporate Performance Of Listed Manufacturing Companies In Hong Kong And Singapore – A Comparative Study Of The Two Asian Tigers, Foo S.L. Apr 2015

Financial Health And Corporate Performance Of Listed Manufacturing Companies In Hong Kong And Singapore – A Comparative Study Of The Two Asian Tigers, Foo S.L.

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Hong Kong and Singapore are two leading economies in Asia Pacific. This study examines the relationship between the financial health, as measured by the Altman Z-Score, and corporate performance, as measured by the Return on Equity (ROE), of listed manufacturing companies in these two markets. A linear regression was conducted between these variables to determine the magnitude and direction of their relationships. The trends of Z-Scores over a fourteen-year period are also analyzed. The analysis covers the period from 2000 to 2013(inclusive) and yielded a statistically positive correlation between ROE and the Z-Score for both markets. Singapore and Hong Kong …


Executive Compensation And Regulation Imposed Governance: Evidence From The California Non-Profit Integrity Act (2004), Sandip Dhole, Saleha B. Khumawala, Sagarika Mishra, Tharindra Ranasinghe Mar 2015

Executive Compensation And Regulation Imposed Governance: Evidence From The California Non-Profit Integrity Act (2004), Sandip Dhole, Saleha B. Khumawala, Sagarika Mishra, Tharindra Ranasinghe

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This study examines the impact of the California Nonprofit Integrity Act of 2004 on CEO compensation costs in affected organizations. Contrary to the stated objective of the Act that executive compensation is “just and reasonable,” we find that CEO compensation costs for affected nonprofits during the post-regulation periods have increased by about 6.3 percent when compared with a control group of comparable unaffected nonprofits. In addition, the relative increase in CEO compensation appears to come from nonprofits that have experienced greater regulatory cost increases. We do not find evidence that the Act resulted in a change in CEO pay performance …


Splitting Specified Foreign Sourced Income Between Tax Exempt And Taxable Portions: An Optimal Solution (Part 3 Of 3), Teng Aun Khoo, Clement Kai Guan Tan Mar 2015

Splitting Specified Foreign Sourced Income Between Tax Exempt And Taxable Portions: An Optimal Solution (Part 3 Of 3), Teng Aun Khoo, Clement Kai Guan Tan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

No abstract provided.


Isca Pre-Budget Survey Findings 2015: Insights From The Accounting And Business Community, Clarence Goh Feb 2015

Isca Pre-Budget Survey Findings 2015: Insights From The Accounting And Business Community, Clarence Goh

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Recent forecasts by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimate that the global economy will grow by 3.8% in 2015. While this represents an improvement from the 3.3% growth forecasted for 2014, growth in 2015 is expected to be hampered by persistent weakness in the Eurozone and slowdowns in major emerging markets.


Active Cds Trading And Managers’ Voluntary Disclosure, Jae Bum Kim, Pervin K. Shroff, Dushyantk Umar Vyas, Regina Wittenberg Moerman Jan 2015

Active Cds Trading And Managers’ Voluntary Disclosure, Jae Bum Kim, Pervin K. Shroff, Dushyantk Umar Vyas, Regina Wittenberg Moerman

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

No abstract provided.


Short Selling Pressure, Stock Price Behavior, And Management Forecast Precision: Evidence From A Natural Experiment, Yinghua Li, Liandong Zhang Jan 2015

Short Selling Pressure, Stock Price Behavior, And Management Forecast Precision: Evidence From A Natural Experiment, Yinghua Li, Liandong Zhang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Using a natural experiment (Regulation SHO), we show that short selling pressure and consequent stock price behavior have a causal effect on managers' voluntary disclosure choices. Specifically, we find that managers respond to a positive exogenous shock to short selling pressure and price sensitivity to bad news by reducing the precision of bad news forecasts. This finding on management forecasts appears to be generalizable to other corporate disclosures. In particular, we find that, in response to increased short selling pressure, managers also reduce the readability (or increase the fuzziness) of bad news annual reports. Overall, our results suggest that maintaining …


The Inclusion Of General Counsel In Top Management And Tax Avoidance, Beng Wee Goh, Jimmy Lee, Jeffrey Ng Dec 2014

The Inclusion Of General Counsel In Top Management And Tax Avoidance, Beng Wee Goh, Jimmy Lee, Jeffrey Ng

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine whether the inclusion of general counsel in top management is associated with a firm’s tax avoidance. We find that firms with general counsel as part of the top management team have lower GAAP effective tax rate, more uncertain tax positions, a higher likelihood of engaging in tax shelter activities, and more tax haven countries in which the firm reports a significant subsidiary, relative to firms without a general counsel in top management. In addition, we find that among firms with general counsel in top management, tax avoidance is greater when (1) the general counsel has tax-related expertise, (2) …


Cfo Alert: Do You Know What Your Board Audit Committee Is Up To?, Clarence Goh Dec 2014

Cfo Alert: Do You Know What Your Board Audit Committee Is Up To?, Clarence Goh

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In October 2014, American Realty Capital Properties – one of the largest real estate investment trusts in the US – stunned the market. Its CEO, David Kay, disclosed that the company had overstated its income in the first quarter of the year – and that executives chose not to correct the error in the second quarter “in order to conceal the error.”


Cross-Listings And Corporate Cash Savings: International Evidence, Yuanto Kusnadi Dec 2014

Cross-Listings And Corporate Cash Savings: International Evidence, Yuanto Kusnadi

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This paper examines foreign firms that are cross-listed on the U.S. stock exchanges and finds that they exhibit higher cash savings sensitivity to stock price than their non-cross-listed counterparts. This finding is robust even after controlling for alternative regression specifications and samples, country-level institutional infrastructures, different listing types, and the endogeneity of the cross-listing decision. Further cross-sectional tests reveal that the increase in cash savings sensitivity to stock price is more pronounced for cross-listed firms with stock prices that are more informative, which is consistent with the influence of the managerial learning channel. The empirical evidence sheds more light on …


Auditor Switching For Opinion Shopping, And Subsequnt Audit Quality And Audit Fee: Evidence From Post-Sox Period, Jong-Hag Choi, Heesun Chung, Catherine Heyjung Sonu, Yoonseok Zang Nov 2014

Auditor Switching For Opinion Shopping, And Subsequnt Audit Quality And Audit Fee: Evidence From Post-Sox Period, Jong-Hag Choi, Heesun Chung, Catherine Heyjung Sonu, Yoonseok Zang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Theory suggests that firms engage in opinion shopping to obtain better audit opinions. However, there is scarce evidence on the economic consequences of the opinion shopping behaviors. In this paper, we examine the effect of auditor switches for opinion shopping on audit quality and audit fees. Using 30,333 firm-year observations over the 2004-2012 period in the U.S., we first document evidence that firms switch their auditors in search for better audit opinions. Next, we find that the audit quality of clients that switch auditors for opinion shopping is significantly lower than that of clients that did not switch auditors or …


Internal Control And Operational Efficiency, Qiang Cheng, Beng Wee Goh, Jae Bum Kim Oct 2014

Internal Control And Operational Efficiency, Qiang Cheng, Beng Wee Goh, Jae Bum Kim

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In this study, we examine whether and how internal control over financial reporting affects firmoperational efficiency. We find that operational efficiency, derived from the frontier analysis, issignificantly lower among firms with material weaknesses in internal control relative to firmswithout such weaknesses. We document some evidence suggesting that effective internal controlleads to greater operational efficiency through reducing the likelihood of misappropriation ofcorporate resources and through enhancing the quality of internal reports for decision making.We also document that smaller firms benefit more from having effective internal control in termsof operational efficiency. In addition, we find that the market appears to understand the …


Family Firm Research: A Review, Qiang Cheng Sep 2014

Family Firm Research: A Review, Qiang Cheng

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This article reviews family firm studies in the finance and accounting literature, primarily those conducted using data from the United States and China. Family owners have unique features such as concentrated ownership, long investment horizon, and reputation concerns. Given the distinguishing features of family ownership and control, family firms face unique agency conflicts. We discuss the agency problems in family firms and review the findings of recent family firm studies. We call for more research to understand the unique family effects and encourage more research on Chinese family firms. Part I of the article discusses the fundaments of family firms: …


Conservatism And Equity Ownership Of The Founding Family, Shuping Chen, Xia Chen, Qiang Cheng Jul 2014

Conservatism And Equity Ownership Of The Founding Family, Shuping Chen, Xia Chen, Qiang Cheng

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We investigate the impact of founding family ownership on accounting conservatism. Family ownership is characterised by large, under-diversified equity stake and long investment horizon. These features give family owners both the incentives and the ability to implement conservative financial reporting to reduce legal liability and mitigate agency conflicts with other stakeholders. Since CEOs can have different incentives towards conservatism, we focus on ownership of non-CEO founding family members in our investigation. We find that conservatism increases with non-CEO family ownership, supporting our prediction. This relationship becomes insignificant in family firms with founders serving as CEOs, either due to founder CEOs' …


Should Singapore Adopt 'Say On Pay'?, Clarence Goh Jul 2014

Should Singapore Adopt 'Say On Pay'?, Clarence Goh

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

SoP may require disclosures that could harm a firm's competitive interests.


Should Singapore Adopt 'Say On Pay'?, Clarence Goh Jul 2014

Should Singapore Adopt 'Say On Pay'?, Clarence Goh

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

SoP may require disclosures that could harm a firm's competitive interests.


Societal Trust And Corporate Tax Avoidance, Kiridaran Kanagaretnam, Jimmy Lee, Chee Yeow Lim, Gerald J. Lobo Jun 2014

Societal Trust And Corporate Tax Avoidance, Kiridaran Kanagaretnam, Jimmy Lee, Chee Yeow Lim, Gerald J. Lobo

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Using an international sample of firms and a country-level index for societal trust, we study how differences in trust across countries relate to corporate tax avoidance. Consistent with our prediction, we find strong evidence that societal trust is negatively associated with corporate tax avoidance by firms, even after controlling for other determinants such as home country tax system characteristics. We also explore the effects of three country-level institutional characteristics – level of investor protection, disclosure requirement, and tax enforcement – on the relation between societal trust and tax avoidance. We predict and find that the effects of trust on tax …


Activist Directors: Determinants And Consequences, Ian D Gow, Sa-Pyung Sean Shin, Suraj Srinivasan Jun 2014

Activist Directors: Determinants And Consequences, Ian D Gow, Sa-Pyung Sean Shin, Suraj Srinivasan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This paper examines the determinants and consequences of hedge fund activism with a focuson activist directors, i.e., those directors appointed in response to demands by activists.Using a sample of 1,969 activism events over the period 2004–2012, we identify 824 activistdirectors. We find that activists are more likely to gain board seats at smaller firms and thosewith weaker stock price performance. Activists remain as shareholders longer when they haveboard seats, with holding periods consistent with conventional notions of “long-term” institutionalinvestors. As in prior research, we find positive announcement-period returns of around4–5% when a firm is targeted by activists, and a 2% …