Corporate Finance Commons^™

The Party's Over: The Role Of Earnings Guidance In Resolving Sentiment-Driven Overvaluation, Nicholas Seybert, Holly I. Yang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This paper shows that an important link between investor sentiment and firm over valuation is optimistic earnings expectations, and that management earnings guidance helps resolve sentiment-driven overvaluation. Using previously identified firm characteristics, we find that most of the negative returns to uncertain firms in months following high-sentiment periods fall within the three-day window around the issuance of management earnings guidance. Comparisons of guidance months to nonguidance months show that guidance issuance affects the magnitude and not just the daily distribution of negative returns. There is also some evidence of negative returns around earnings announcements for firms that previously issued guidance, …

An Improved Test For Statistical Arbitrage, Robert Jarrow, Melvyn Teo, Yiu Kuen Tse, Mitch Warachka

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We improve upon the power of the statistical arbitrage test in Hogan, Jarrow, Teo, and Warachka (2004). Our methodology also allows for the evaluation of return anomalies under weaker assumptions. We then compare strategies based on their convergence rates to arbitrage and identify strategies whose probability of a loss declines to zero most rapidly. These strategies are preferred by investors with finite horizons or limited capital. After controlling for market frictions and examining convergence rates to arbitrage, we find that momentum and value strategies offer the most desirable trading opportunities.

2012 Private Capital Markets Report, John K. Paglia

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 in today’s economic …

Financial Literacy And Numerical Ability: Keys To Better Mortgage Outcomes, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

While mortgage credit expansion had lead to a rapid increase of home ownership in the US, the reversal of home prices beginning in 2006 resulted in a substantial increase in mortgage delinquencies and an explosion in outright defaults. Its devastating impact on the associated mortgage backed securities led the US and the world to its worst financial and macroeconomic crisis since the Great Depression, with its deleterious effects still felt today.

Analysis Of Firm Risk Around S&P 500 Index Changes., Stoyu Ivanov

Faculty Publications

In this study we extend the work of Vijh (1994), barberis, Schleifer and Wurgler (2005), Denis, McConnell, Ovtchinnikov and Yu (2003) and Geppert, Ivanov and Karel (2011) by examining the effect of the addition to or deletion from the S&P 500 Index on the firm's Fama - French four factor model loadings before and after the event. We find that added to and deleted from the S&p 500 Index firms experience unique sensitivity to the small cap minus Big cap (SMB) and momentum (UMD) factors. this finding and robustness tests indicate that addition to and deletion from the S&P 500 …

Reit Etfs Performance During The Financial Crisis., Stoyu Ivanov

Faculty Publications

In this study the “disintegration hypothesis” is tested. It is examined whether the Vanguard Real Estate Investment Trust and iShares Dow Jones US Real Estate Index Fund exchange traded funds disintegrate from their underlying indexes during the recent financial crisis. Failure to support the “disintegration hypothesis” of the exchange traded fund and underlying index is found. It is also found that the Vanguard Real Estate Investment Trust exchange traded fund is consistently cointegrated with its underlying index the MSCI US REITs Index, before, during and after the financial crisis. It is also found that the iShares Dow Jones US Real …

Should The Sec Adopt International Financial Reporting Standards?, Clemense Ehoff Jr., Dov Fischer

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of Business

In 2002, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) formally began a process to converge Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). By the end of 2011, the SEC will likely decide on whether to adopt International Financial Reporting Standards as the financial reporting system for U.S. public companies, continue with the convergence project, or reject IFRS altogether. This paper examines the benefits and drawbacks of each option and formulates a recommendation as to which option is in the best interest of U.S. investors.

Paying The Irs Whistleblower: A Critical Analysis Of Collected Proceeds, Karie Davis-Nozemack, Sarah J. Webber

Accounting Faculty Publications

Congressional changes to the IRS Whistleblower Program were intended to induce more participation in the program by allowing larger incentives and greater certainty that whistleblowers would be paid. Since the Program was amended, tax whistleblower tips have increased 76 percent1 and revenue collected due to whistleblowers has increased 79 percent.2 Despite a rise in tips and revenue collected, whistleblower payments have not increased. In fact, the number of tax whistleblower awards paid has decreased 44 percent.3 We hypothesize that this trend is due to the administration of the program but also to the interpretation of “collected proceeds.” Collected proceeds are …

Redefining Globalization, Aqueil Ahmad

Walden Faculty and Staff Publications

This article highlights some facts and fallacies about globalization, with a particular reference to the global economy. To explain what is globalization and what it is not is critical both theoretically and practically for nations, corporations, and communities to benefit from it and avoid its negative consequences. Some historical antecedents of globalization and the interactive nature of its structures and processes are highlighted in this article. The analysis is expected to benefit scholars, practitioners, and agents of social change interested and involved directly or indirectly in the impacts and processes of globalization.

Persistence And Survival In Entrepreneurship: The Case Of The Wave Energy Conversion Corporation Of America, Giles Jackson, Randy Boxx

New England Journal of Entrepreneurship

Many entrepreneurial firms risk falling into a cash flow “Valley of Death”—the stage of a young firm’s life when seed funding is running dry but the firm has yet to secure sufficient additional funding to carry it through to product commercialization.This is particularly true in the nascent cleantech sector, where investments are often complex and capital intensive. Drawing on an in-depth interview with seasoned entrepreneur Brian Cunningham, CEO of the Wave Energy Conversion Corporation of America, this article explores the role of persistence in entrepreneurship, distinguishing between “calculated” and “blind” persistence.

How Did Listed Islamic And Traditional Banks Performed: Pre And Post The 2008 Financial Crisis?, Mohamed Rashwan

Business Administration

This study tests the efficiency and profitability of banks that belongs to two different sectors: a) Islamic Banks (IBs) and b) Traditional Banks (TBs). The study concentrates on the pre and post 2008 financial crisis with an aim to test if there are any significant differences in performance between the two sectors. The study applies the MANOVA techniques to analyze the financial secondary data for only publicly traded banks in the same region. The findings of the study show that there is a significant difference between the two sectors in 2007 and 2009 and there are no significant differences in …

Credit Gap In Small Businesses: Some New Evidence, Atreya Chakraborty

Accounting and Finance Faculty Publication Series

What is the magnitude of credit constraint affecting small businesses? This paper provides estimate of the credit gap – defined as the difference between the desired and actual levels of debt for credit constrained small businesses. The estimated credit gap is approximately 20 percent, i.e., credit constrained small business on the average would desire 20 percent more debt. This credit gap varies considerably across industries, with manufacturing firms facing a significantly larger gap than firms in the wholesale or service industries.

Trading Strategy Of Firms In Financial Distress, Christopher J. Arnholz

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper tests two hypothesis 1) that firms entering financial distress incur costs that depress the stock price 2) firms entering financial distress are over sold, and the year after they enter financial distress the price bounces back. The paper tests a simple trading strategy of buying the distressed firm and selling the largest firm in the industry. The strategy yields an average return of 10.16%. The returns are enhanced by sorting firms by price to book and selecting firms from the highest quartile, yielding an average return of 34.75%

Application Of The Concept Of Project Finance In Iraq- A Comparative And Analytical Study, Faris K. Nesheiwat

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

Many scholars and experts have addressed the issue of project finance, but one area that remains without detailed examination is its legal treatment under the legal systems of developing countries. The legal concepts applied under project finance are Western and are not necessarily identical to or compatible with legal concepts in Middle Eastern countries in general or Iraq in particular. In that sense, project finance is a transplanted legal concept when examined in the Middle Eastern legal framework. Although this Paper tackles the legal and strategic issues arising from the use of project finance in Iraq, its analysis and comparative …

Lessons From The Flash Crash For The Regulation Of High-Frequency Traders, Edgar Ortega Barrales

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

Are equity markets vulnerable to a sudden collapse if the traders who account for about half of the volume have no regulatory obligations to stabilize prices? After the “Flash Crash” of May 6, 2010, policymakers have resoundingly answered this question in the affirmative. During the worst of the crash, some of the so-called high-frequency trading firms that dominate equity markets stopped trading and prices collapsed, momentarily wiping out almost $1 trillion in market value. In response, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is considering whether high-frequency trading firms should be required to act as the traders of last resort. This …

Burning Down The House Or Simply Rolling The Dice: A Comment On Section 621 Of The Dodd-Frank Act And Recommendation For Its Implementation, Joshua R. Rosenthal

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

Section 621 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act modifies the Securities Act of 1933 to prohibit the underwriter, placement agent, initial purchaser, or sponsor, or any affiliate or subsidiary of any such entity of an asset-backed financial product from betting against that very product for one year after the product’s initial sale. The rule prohibits anyone who structures or sells an asset-backed security or a product composed of asset-backed securities from going short, in the specified timeframe, on what they have sold, and labels such transactions as presenting material conflicts of interest. This Comment discusses traces …

Private Equity Investment In The Brics, Andreas Woeller

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

This Article investigates the legal and economic environment for private equity investments in Brazil, Russia, India and China (“BRIC”). In contrast with disappointing returns in the 1990s, private equity investment has soared in developing countries over the past decade. To explain what has led to the recent success of private equity in the BRICs, this Article will first give an overview of the challenges faced generally when investing in portfolio companies in developing markets and then analyze the legal and economic framework for each of the four BRICs. This Article finds that Brazil and China offer the best opportunities for …

Nonstatistical Factors Influencing Predictions Of Financial Distress And Managerial Implications In The All-Cargo Airline Industry, Robert O. Walton

Publications

All-cargo airlines carry over 50% of global airfreight, yet they are prone to bankruptcy. Many financial models are designed to predict a firms' financial health, but they do not assess many nonstatistical factors that influence the prediction capability of these models. In this study, qualitative grounded theory design was used to identify nonstatistical factors and explore how they influence bankruptcy prediction models in the all-cargo airline industry. In the first phase of the study, financial data from 2005 to 2009 for 17 all-cargo U.S. airlines were used to determine the bankruptcy prediction ability of the Kroeze financial bankruptcy model. A …

Forecasting And Stress-Testing The Risk-Based Capital Requirements For Revolving Retail Exposures, Kwamie Dunbar

WCBT Working Papers

This paper presents a tractable and empirically sound technique for generating stressed probabilities of default (PDs) which are then used to derive loss rates for the provisioning of a bank’s risk-based capital. This work is in response to the recent regulatory findings attributed to the Supervisory Capital Assessment Program (SCAP) stress tests of 2009 which revealed weaknesses in the existing regulatory and economic capital approaches. The SCAP projected losses of approximately $82.4 Billion in banks’ credit card portfolios for 2010, highlighting the need for better forecasting and stress testing of revolving retail exposures.

This study proposes a timely model that …

The Effect Of Product Demand Decline On Investments In Innovations: Evidence From The U.S. Defense Industry, Donald W. Gribbin, Hong Qian, Ke Zhong

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of Business

The end of the Cold War led to a substantial decline in defense product demand. This study investigates the effects of product demand decline on defense firms’ investments in R&D for innovations. Our evidence indicates significant lower levels of R&D intensity for the low demand period (1993 to 1998) than for the high demand period (1984 to 1989). We also find significant declines in the defense firms' return on assets over the period, which is mainly attributable to a significant decrease in the firms' efficiency of using assets to produce sales. The defense firms, despite decline in defense product sales, …

Can An Old Dog Learn New Tricks? Applying Traditional Corporate Law Principles To New Social Enterprise Legislation, Alicia E. Plerhoples

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Seven U.S. states have recently adopted the benefit corporation or the flexible purpose corporation—two novel corporate forms intended to house social enterprises, i.e., those ventures that pursue social and environmental missions along with profits. And yet, these corporate forms are not viable or sustainable if they do not attract social entrepreneurs or social investors due to the lack of understanding and inquiry into how traditional corporate law principles will be applied to them. This article begins this necessary examination. As a first approach, this article assesses shareholder primacy and the shareholder wealth maximization norm in the context of the sale …

The Sarbanes Oxley Act's Contribution To Curtailing Corporate Bribery, Karen Cascini, Alan Delfavero, Mario Mililli

WCBT Faculty Publications

In the wake of corporate scandals occurring in the early 2000s, a need for stricter regulation was deemed necessary by the investors of U.S. public companies. In 2002, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SoX) was created. Accordingly, under the rules of SoX, U.S. corporations were faced with increased oversight and also needed to substantially improve their internal controls. As companies began to scrutinize their internal affairs more closely, some businesses detected other forms of criminal activity occurring internally, such as bribery. Those companies and individuals found to have committed bribery have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 (FCPA). Throughout this …

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 …

Assessing The Valuation And Risk Implications Of Fair Value Accounting For Liabilities: Evidence From Fas 159'S Reported Gains And Losses, Sung Gon Chung, Gerald Lobo, Kevin Ow Yong

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This study examines the implications of fair value liability gains and losses arising from the adoption of Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 159 (hereafter FAS 159). We find a positive correspondence between a firm’s FAS 159 fair value liability gains and losses and stock returns. Further analysis indicates that fair value gains and losses from liabilities attributable to the change in a firm’s own credit risk, which are considered counter-intuitive by critics of fair value accounting for liabilities, are also positively related to returns. Lastly, we document that the volatility of earnings that incorporate FAS 159 liability fair value …

An Analytical And Empirical Measure Of The Degree Of Conditional Conservatism, Dan Segal, Jeffrey L. Callen

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

There is a profound gap between models of accounting conservatism and the proxies for conditional conservatism currently used by the empirical literature. Not one of the proxies employed by the empirical literature to date obtains from a rigorous definition of conditional conservatism. In contrast, this study defines conditional conservatism in terms of truncated distributions and derives analytically a nonlinear relation between revisions to returns and earnings news for the conservative firm. This nonlinear relation is shown to be mathematically equivalent to two linear relations conditioned on the firm's degree of conservatism. From these relations, we derive a model-based proxy of …

Pricing Mortality Securities With Correlated Mortality Indexes, Yijia Lin, Sheen Liu, Jifeng Yu

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

This article proposes a stochastic model, which captures mortality correlations across countries and common mortality shocks, for analyzing catastrophe mortality contingent claims. To estimate our model, we apply particle filtering, a general technique that has wide applications in non-Gaussian and multivariate jump-diffusion models and models with nonanalytic observation equations. In addition, we illustrate how to price mortality securities with normalized multivariate exponential titling based on the estimated mortality correlations and jump parameters. Our results show the significance of modeling mortality correlations and transient jumps in mortality security pricing.

Accounting Flexibility And Managers’ Forecast Behavior Prior To Seasoned Equity Offerings, Jae Bum Kim

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This study examines the effect of accounting flexibility on managers’ forecasting behavior prior to seasoned equity offerings(SEO). While SEO firms have strong incentives to convey optimistic information to boost the pre-SEO stock price, they also face enhanced litigation risk arising from SEO-related regulations. Thus, I hypothesize that managers of SEO firms will release optimistic forecasts prior to an SEO only if they have the accounting flexibility to manage subsequent reported earnings to meet or exceed their forecasts. I find that managers with greater accounting flexibility are more likely to issue a forecast prior to the SEO and their forecasts are …

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.