Corporate Finance Commons^™

The Effect Of Corporate Visibility On Corporate Social Responsibility, Zhichuan Li, Taylor Morris, Brian Young

Business Publications

Outside of direct ownership, the general public may feel it is an implicit stakeholder of a firm. As the public becomes more vested in a firm’s actions, the firm may be more likely to engage in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities. We proxy for the public’s stake in a firm with public visibility. Based on 3,400 unique newspaper publications from 1994 to 2008, we measure visibility for the U.S. S&P 500 firms with the frequency of print articles per year concerning the firm. We find that visibility has a signficant, positive relationship with the CSR rating. Evidence also suggests this …

College Of Business Dean's Report: 2018-2019, Ryan Butt

College of Business Dean’s Reports

No abstract provided.

Momentum And Reversal: The Role Of Short Selling, Zhaobo Zhu, Xinrui Duan, Licheng Sun, Jun Tu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper investigates the relation between short selling and momentum. We document that a consistent momentum strategy that buys lightly shorted winners and sells heavily shorted losers exhibits strong short-term momentum and no long-term reversal. In contrast, an inconsistent momentum strategy that buys heavily shorted winners and sells lightly shorted losers experiences weak short-term momentum and persistent long-term reversal. Our results are robust after controlling for firm characteristics, proxy for short-sale constraints, and investor sentiment, as well as an exogenous shock (the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997). These findings present a new challenge to existing theories of momentum that rely …

The Development Of Orphan Drugs; A Financial And Ethical Decision, Emmett S. Worth

Honors Projects

This paper explores the decision faced by a firm to invest in an orphan drug development project. Two primary areas of concern are considered: financial and ethical. In order to properly understand these two areas, the paper first summarizes the current development landscape for non-orphan and orphan drugs. Once the basic development structure is established, a discussion regarding the differences in the Net Present Value equation for a non-orphan and orphan product may occur. Once the differences in the financial decision are established, the paper will discuss the ethical considerations surrounding drug development and drug pricing. The combination of the …

Auditor Choice And Information Asymmetry: Evidence From International Syndicated Loans, Zhiming Ma, Derrald Stice, Rencheng Wang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Analyzing a large sample of non-US public firms from 31 countries that obtain private loans, we find that loan syndicates that lend to borrowers that employ Big N auditors are larger and less concentrated and that the lead arrangers and largest investors of these syndicates are able to hold a lower proportion of the loan after issuance. Further analysis demonstrates that this effect exists only in countries with strong creditor rights and in those countries with high levels of societal trust, suggesting that both sound formal and informal institutional factors are prerequisites for lenders and borrowers to benefit from differential …

Readability Of 10-K Reports And Stock Price Crash Risk, Chansog (Francis) Kim, Ke Wang, Liandong Zhang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This study shows that less readable 10‐K reports are associated with higher stock price crash risk. The results are consistent with the argument that managers can successfully hide adverse information by writing complex financial reports, which leads to stock price crashes when the hidden bad news accumulates and reaches a tipping point. Cross‐sectional analyses show that the effect of financial reporting complexity on crash risk is more pronounced for firms with persistent negative earnings news or transitory positive earnings news, greater chief executive officer stock option incentives, or lower litigation risk. Finally, accrual manipulation appears to be positively related to …

Marginal Cost Of Risk-Based Capital And Risk-Taking, Tao Chen, Jing Rong Goh, Shinichi Kamiya, Pingyi Lou

Research Collection School Of Economics

We explore the impact of capital adequacy requirements on financial institutions' risk-taking behavior from a novel perspective. Specifically, we show that an important feature of the risk-based capital (RBC) system a built-in diversification benefit in aggregating risk categories induces moral hazard. We find that insurers that face lower marginal RBC costs of fixed-income (FI) investment tend to purchase riskier Fl securities. This relationship holds even when lower marginal RBC costs result from increased risk in other risk categories, which is an unintended consequence of the RBC's square root rule. Using Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy as exogenous shocks to the RBC …

The Effects Of Corporate Reputation And Compensation Disclosure On Investor Judgments, Poh Sun Seow, Clarence Goh, Gary Pan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Regulators have increased the disclosure requirements of top executives as part of corporate governance reform. This study examines how trust arising from a firm’s corporate reputation will interact with top executive compensation disclosure to influence investor judgments. This study used a 2 X 2 between subjects experimental design, with corporate reputation (good versus bad) and pay ratio (high versus low) as independent variables to test the hypotheses. The key findings show that if the firm with a good corporate reputation discloses a high pay ratio, participants punished the good reputation firm more than the bad reputation firm, demonstrating a negative …

Crossed Wires: Endorsement Signals And The Effects Of Ipo Firm Delistings On Venture Capitalists’ Reputations, David Gomulya, Kyuho Jin, Peggy M. Lee, Timothy G. Pollock

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Signaling theorists have paid a great deal of attention to the costs of acquiring characteristics that can serve as signals, such as endorsements from reputable third parties. However limited attention has been devoted to the penalty costs associated with providing inaccurate signals and the factors that can exacerbate or attenuate the penalties. In this study, we examine the effect of negative feedback loops on venture capital firms’ reputations that result from the failures (delistings) of the newly-public firms they once endorsed. Drawing on signaling and attribution theories, we argue that endorsements by reputable VC firms create high expectations that, when …

State Ownership, Firm Specific Risk And Momentum Trading, Saeed Nassir Algahtani

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation consists of two essays. In the first essay, we investigate the relation of government ownership to the idiosyncratic volatility of Saudi Arabian firms that traded in the Saudi stock exchange between 2010 and 2016. The results show that publicly traded firms with an increase in government ownership have less idiosyncratic volatility. Furthermore, we investigate market leverage ratio, dividend payout ratio, and illiquidity ratio as potential roles in which government ownership influences the idiosyncratic volatility. The results prove the negative relationship between government ownership and idiosyncratic volatility. In the second essay, we investigate the association between government ownership and …

Financial Analysis And Valuation Of Vista Outdoor, Inc, Cyrille Litche

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

This report presents the financial analysis of Vista Outdoor Inc, a Minnesota based company that operates through the Outdoor Products and Shooting Sports segments. The purpose of this analysis is to provide a valuation of the company based on recent financial data and to make an investment recommendation based on a specific stock closing date.

Financial Analysis Of Otter Tail Corporation, Shawn Tykwinski

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

Otter Tail is a holding company with 5 subsidiaries residing in three different business segments: electric, which includes the production, transmission, distribution and sale of electric energy; manufacturing, which consists of businesses in the manufacturing contract machining, metal parts stamping, fabrication and painting, and production of material and handling trays and horticultural containers; and plastics, which consists of businesses producing polyvinyl chloride pipe. The electric segment provided electricity to more than 130,000 customers in western Minnesota, eastern North Dakota and northeastern South Dakota. The investment recommendation given in this report was based on a Corporate Valuation Model that discounts free …

Financial Analysis And Valuation Of Christopher And Banks Corp.,, Mona Barhouma

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

This project report entitled to “Financial Analysis and Valuation of Christopher and Banks Corporation.” The main objective of the study is to analyze the financial position of the company for the past five years from 2014 to 2018, in contrast to, its main peer company “Chico’s Inc.,” and to study a 5-year stock price performance as of March 29,2019. The historical financial data were collected from the company’s annual 10 ks. The balance sheet, Income Statement, and Cash Flow Statement are forecasted for the next four years from 2020 to 2023. Financial metric used to measure the financial performance of …

The Role Of Liquidity In Technology Sector M&As, Cameron Gaechter

CURCE Annual Undergraduate Conference

The purpose of this study is to examine abnormal wealth effects observed by acquirer and target shareholders in technology-sector M&A deals, as well as the effect that liquidity positioning has on merger premiums or discounts. Abnormal wealth effects experienced by the acquirer and target both pre- and post-merger announcement were tested in a two-sided event study consisting of a large sample of companies representing the two sides of the transaction. The event study demonstrates that different characteristics of M&A deals, i.e. payment consideration and domesticity, have asymmetric effects on abnormal wealth effects for shareholders of both parties, with the most …

Use Advances In Data Science And Computing Power To Invest In Stock Market, Mustafa A. Sakarwala, Anthony Tanaydin

SMU Data Science Review

As part of its overseeing of capital markets, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requires firms with publicly traded shares to issue periodic reports to shareholders. These SEC filings are part of the SEC’s Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system (EDGAR), a large online database. Financial services and banking industry have armies of analysts that are dedicated to rushing over, analyzing, and attempting to quantify qualitative data from this SEC mandated reporting. We sought to prototype a predictive model to render consistent judgments on a company's prospects, based on the written textual sections of public earnings releases extracted from …

The Performance Of Military Defense Contracted Companies After September 11th, 2001: The Case Of Politically Connected Companies, Derek J. Larsen

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This paper examines the effect that the terrorist attacks on September 11^th, 2001 had on the stock prices of companies within the military defense industry. In addition, this paper studies the effect of the defense firms’ political engagement (through lobbying activities) and how this affected the stock price response to the terrorist attacks. Our study finds that the cumulative abnormal returns of these companies are positively significant and that companies who lobbied experienced higher returns relative to those who did not lobby.

Dividend Payments And Excess Cash: An Experimental Analysis, Z. Tingting Jia, Matthew J. Mcmahon

Economics & Finance Faculty Publications

There is an observed positive correlation between the size of firms’ dividends and the amount of cash they keep on hand. We specify a new channel of precautionary cash holdings as related to dividend-smoothing, which predicts that increased dividends should cause firms to keep more cash on hand. In the reverse direction, theory’s predictions depend on the source of the increased cash on hand. General dividend smoothing theory predicts that temporary increases in cash due to natural market fluctuations should not affect dividends. If the increased cash is due to a permanent increase in profitability, both the marginal benefit and …

New Perspectives About Financial Intermediation: Disruption By Senior Managers And Financial Technologies, Yu Shan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters that span managerial styles, financial technologies, and social interactions.

Chapter 1 Banks increase credit risk-taking in syndicated bank loans when their systemic risk increases; however, the interrelationship across risks depends on bank managerial styles. Using a connectedness sampling method to differentiate patterns of business policy styles and systemic risk-taking among managers, I find that credit risk-taking is more sensitive to the bank's systemic risk if the manager exhibits a preference for systemic risk. Asset-innovating managers (exhibiting a preference for non-traditional forms of income and assets) take higher credit risk in their loan portfolios, but …

Essays On Bank Acquisitions And Systemic Risk, Farindokht Vaghefi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of two chapters on bank acquisitions and systemic risk.

Chapter 1: This chapter explores whether bank acquisitions are associated with systemic risk-shifting. Acquisitions can form larger and more diversified firms and, as such, increase the correlation of the acquirer's investment with other banks and subsequently the probability of their joint failure. This can be beneficial for the acquirer due to (implicit) government ``too-many-to-fail'' guarantees. I find that bank acquisitions on average lead to an increase in acquires' systemic risk, which is in turn associated with an increase in firm value for non-distressed acquisitions. Interestingly, congruent with the …

Leverage Adjustment And Credit Risk, Wei He

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three coherent chapters that discuss the capital structure target, speed of adjustment and effect of speed of adjustment on credit risk.

Ⅰ: We standardize leverage ratio by underlying business risk. The methodology of standardization follows the assumption that asset value follows a geometric Brownian motion. We find that by standardizing book leverage ratio, standardized leverage ratio can be explained by firm characteristics with a much larger coefficient of determination compared with book leverage ratio. The coefficient of determination difference of regression with standardized leverage ratio and book leverage ratio becomes even larger if we exclude zero …

Debt Heterogeneity And Covenants, Yun Lou, Clemens A. Otto

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Coordination failure among owners of heterogeneous debt types increases distress costs. Covenants reduce expected distress costs by lowering the probability of liquidity shortages, increasing liquidation values, and incentivizing creditor monitoring. We predict and find that new debt contracts include more covenants when borrowers' existing debt structures are more heterogeneous. Our findings suggest that covenants are not only used to address creditor-shareholder conflicts but also to reduce the expected costs of coordination failure among creditors. Further, our results indicate a dynamic component missing from static debt structure models: Debt heterogeneity entails additional covenants (i.e., constraints) when raising future debt.

Recommendations From Sec’S Plain English Handbook: Perspectives From Behavioral Research, Clarence Goh

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

The SEC published the plain English handbook in 1998 with the objective of providing preparers of financial disclosures with a guide to using well-established techniques to create clearer and more informative disclosure documents. The handbook provides various recommendations to preparers of disclosure documents. In this study, I examine and systematically synthesize the extent behavioural research literature that investigates the impact of implementing these recommendations on investors. I do so by developing a framework to systematically examine relevant studies. Overall, the analysis provides important insights from a behavioural perspective into how and why investors react to various recommendations in the SEC’s …

Opinion Shopping To Avoid Going Concern Audit Opinion And Subsequent Audit Quality, Heesun Chung, Catherine Heyjung Sonu, Yoonseok Zang, Jong-Hag Choi

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Despite regulatory concerns over opinion shopping (OS) behavior, there exists little systematic evidence on the prevalence and consequences of OS to avoid a going concern opinion (GCO). Using Lennox's (2000) framework to identify OS, we find that distressed firms successfully engage in OS to avoid a GCO. Moreover, clients engaging in OS exhibit a higher ex post Type II error rate in audit opinions than clients that do not, and the higher Type II error rate is salient for clients switching auditors for OS but not for clients retaining auditors for OS. We continue to find this asymmetric effect of …

“Because I Care I Risk”: How Ceo Free Market Orientation Affects The Extent And Type Of Income Smoothing, Mirzokhidjon S. Abdurakhmonov

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The executive political ideology literature suffers from a lack of conceptual clarity because social and economic issues are conflated. This has created an inconsistency in empirical findings with the theoretical predictions of the political ideology construct. In this dissertation, I identify a distinct economic component, free market orientation, based on support for economic individualism, competition, and property rights to reconcile these inconsistencies. Specifically, I argue that these indicators of free market orientation will have a unique impact on the way executives run their organizations. I develop a novel scale that measures CEO economic values that I term free market orientation …

Much Ado About Audit Opinions, Themin Suwardy

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In a commentary, SMU Associate Professor of Accounting (Practice) and Dean of Postgraduate Professional Programmes Themin Suwardy opined that with a better understanding of the various types of modified audit opinions, investors can react appropriately to the news of companies failing to get a clean opinion. He added that investors should ask tougher questions about key audit matters at annual general meetings in order to get a more rounded and informed picture of a company’s financial and operating status.

Informed Options Trading Prior To Bankruptcy Filings, Li Ge, Jianfeng Hu, Mark Humphery-Jenner, Tse-Chun Lin

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Prior evidence on pre-bankruptcy-filing informed trade is mixed. The inconclusive findings might result from the sole focus on stock trading. We reassess the presence of pre-filing informed and insider trades by examining the information content of options trading before bankruptcy announcements. We find that bankruptcy filing returns are not significantly related to pre-filing insider stock trading. However, filing returns are significantly negatively related to pre-filing insider and informed options trading. The informational content of options trading reduces with options illiquidity and the amount of information impounded into pre-filing stock prices.

The Futurist, Ryan Stenquist

Marriott Student Review

Ubiquitous self-driving cars, robot workers, and massive political shifts may seem far away and irrelevant to our day to day lifestyles. However, Mr. Schenker proves that these changes are fast-approaching and come as timely responses to the problems and opportunities of today.

The Dollar Is Green, And American Banks Should Be Too; Clean Energy Finance And Its Circulation Through Green Banks, Erin C. Moore

Honors College Theses

The earth is at risk for irreversible damage if the carbon footprint of humans is not drastically reduced immediately. The power of financial institutions to initiate change has been utilized by countries around the world against climate change. Financial systems known as green banks mitigate the risks associated with financing environmental projects. Through an examination of the financial performance of major green banks in the United States and the green energy superpowers, the paper discovers Green Banking is not only socially responsible by supporting a clean environment, but also produces a profitable fiscal environment. In this paper, I will explore …

The Velocity Of Risk, Sridhar Ramamoorti, James H. Wanserski, Richard Stover

Accounting Faculty Publications

Only a few decades ago, the onset of problematic risk events often was slow, and organizations handled the corresponding aftermath over a manageable time frame. Organizations armed with extensive public relations resources responded to most postevent crises after planning and analyzing thoughtful responses. Additionally, organizations carefully calculated their transparency with stakeholders regarding the event to manage its impact on the organization. Fast forward to today, and the pace of information is almost instantaneous. For example, when a popular U.S. fast food restaurant chain experienced an outbreak of E. coli-infected lettuce, its stock price decreased 44 percent within 90 days amid …

Disclosure Of Pending Lawsuits And Bond Terms, Yun Lou

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

I examine the effect of the disclosure of pendinglawsuits in 10-K/Q filings on the contractual terms of newly issued bonds. Ifind that firms’ decision to disclose pending lawsuits and the amount ofdisclosed information (i.e., the level of disclosure) have opposite effects.Specifically, firms that disclose a higher proportion of their pending lawsuitsface higher yields and are more likely to include default clauses pertaining tocourt judgments in the bond prospectuses. However, within the subsample offirms that disclose their lawsuits, I find that firms with a higher level of disclosureregarding their pending lawsuits are rewarded with lower yields. This evidencesuggests that bond investors …