Corporate Finance Commons^™

How To Reduce The Tax Bill Of A Multinational Technology Company?, Dimitrios V. Siskos

Publications

It is said that nothing in this world is certain except for death and taxes. For those with clever accountants, however, the latter can be kept to a minimum. Particularly, companies seek to minimize their tax liability through "tax planning", adopting deductions, rebates, exemptions and other “legal” tools that the domestic tax system provides to them. However, while tax planning is considered to be quite logical in the terms of making profit, there is a grey area between this and "tax avoidance”. This paper suggests a legitimate tax plan for a multinational technology company that minimizes its tax obligations1, without …

Gender Performativity And Hegemonic Masculinity In Investment Management, Corina Sheerin, Prof. Margaret Linehan

Dept of Applied Social Science

Purpose

Through an examination of the everyday organisational and social practices, this paper aims to consider gender performativity and hegemonic masculinity within front office investment management. At the core of this research is the need to understand the interactions between gender, power and patriarchy.

Design/methodology/approach

An interpretivist philosophical stance underpins the study. A theory-building approach using 19 semi-structured interviews with investment management employees based in Ireland was undertaken.

Findings

The findings highlight a sector in which gender is performed in line with sectoral expectations, which place men in positions of dominance with hegemonic masculinity inherent. The organisational structures and daily …

Don’S Column: Singapore Corporate Tax Rate: Is It Really A Flat Rate?, Teng Aun Khoo, Clement Tan Kai Guan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

As there is only one corporate tax rate (CTR) in Singapore, it may appear that the Singapore CTR is a single flat rate, currently 17%. However, after taking into account the availability of the partial tax exemption (PTE)scheme, the start-up tax exemption (SUTE) scheme and the corporate income tax rebate (CITR) in Singapore, all of which have an effect of lowering a company’s tax payable, the seemingly flat Singapore CTR is not what it seems to be. Instead, it translates to various progressive tax rates for different tiers of normal chargeable income (NCI).

Don's Column: Revised Conceptual Framework For Financial Reporting (Part 1), Pearl Hock-Neo Tan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In March 2018, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) issued the revised Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting (CF 2018) after five years of deliberation since the Discussion Paper was first issued. CF 2018 is immediately applicable to the IASB and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Interpretations Committee.

New Factors Wanted: Evidence From A Simple Specification Test, Ai He, Dashan Huang, Guofu Zhou

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In this paper, we examine the pricing errors (PEs) of three kinds of factor models: a) six well known ones– the CAPM, the Fama-French three-factor model, the Carhart four-factor model, the Fama-French five-factor model, the Hou-Xue-Zhang Q-factor model, and the Stambaugh-Yuan mispricing-factor model; b) principal component factors of sixty-two anomalies; c) extracted statistical factors. We find that there is a systematic PE reversal pattern. A spread portfolio that buys stocks in the bottom PE decile and sells stocks in the top PE decile earns significant abnormal returns across all the models, implying that none of them is adequate in explaining …

Identifying Ineffective Monitors From Securities Class Action Lawsuits, Chi Shen Wei, Lei Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We identify “ineffective” institutional monitors based on the prevalence of occurrences of securities class-action lawsuits in their overall portfolio. We find that firms with a higher representation of such institutional investors among the firms’ large shareholders have a greater likelihood of future litigation and experience more negative market reactions upon such litigation filings. These firms exhibit other unfavorable governance outcomes including poorer acquisitions and lower CEO turnover-performance sensitivity. We find suggestive evidence that ineffective monitoring may be a result of higher operational risk.

Stock Buyback Announcements: An Examination Of Abnormal Returns In Stock Price & Credit Default Swaps For S&P100 Companies, Alan L. Delfavero

Doctoral Dissertations (DBA)

This event study examines the short-run effect of stock buyback announcements on stock price and credit default swaps (CDS) exclusively for mega capitalization S&P 100 companies. The research sample consists of 53 S&P 100 companies and includes 133 buyback announcement events occurring between September 2011 and May 2018. The study utilizes the market model to estimate expected returns and to compute abnormal returns (AR) for equity and abnormal change (AC) in CDS. Based on an initial analysis, it’s determined that there is a statistically significant AR and cumulative abnormal return (CAR) for stock price, and a significant AC in CDS, …

Reflective Practice Series: Selected Instructional Models Using Synchronous Video Conferencing Software, Martin W. Sivula

MBA Faculty Conference Papers & Journal Articles

With the vast array of resources available to instructors, one would think that instruction and teaching would yield success for all learners. Now, well into the 21^st century has much changed in the classroom? Certainly, movable desks and chairs, advanced audio and visual equipment, and a plethora of all types of technologies which might be able to enhance training and education. Over the last several decades research on individualized instruction, cognitive science, educational psychology, and multimedia instruction (to name a few) have permeated the literature on instruction. With all the research and the vast array of studies on improving …

Addressing Infrastructure Gap Via Public-Private Partnership In Nigeria, Chiedu Ndubisi

Bullion

This paper is arranged in nine Sections. It commenced by examining the issue of the nature of infrastructure and the implication for financing. It also looked at the catalytic role of infrastructure on economic growth and development, including the debilitating implication of its negligence by policy makers. next, the paper attempted at establishing the nexus between infrastructure and economic growth and development.

Essays On Innovation, Analyst Coverage, And Corporate Finance, Yang Liu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters that encompass corporate innovation, analyst coverage, public firm disclosure, and institutional investors.

Leveling The Playing Field Between Large And Small Institutions: Evidence From The Sec’S Xbrl Mandate, Nilabhra Bhattacharya, Young Jun Cho, Jae B. Kim

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We investigate how XBRL adoption affects smaller institutions’ access to financial statement information relative to their larger counterparts. We examine three aspects of trading responsiveness: abnormal trading volume, response speed to 10-K information, and decision to trade immediately following the 10-K filing. With regard to all three aspects of trading responsiveness, we find that small institutions’ responsiveness to 10-K news increases significantly more relative to the change experienced by large institutions from the pre- to post-XBRL periods. We further document that small institutions’ stock picking skills in the 10-K filing period increase more compared to those of large institutions following …

Innovation Under Stress, Zhaojun Huang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The aim of the dissertation is to explore firms’ innovation strategies during certain stressful periods. This dissertation consists of 3 chapters. . .

Chapter 1: Innovation Diversification Under Policy Uncertainty

Using detailed data on patent grants and applications, I explore the effect of policy uncertainty on firms’ innovation strategies. I show that firms that invest in R&D tend to pursue more diversified strategies and are more likely to explore unfamiliar fields during periods of policy uncertainty. These findings hold after adjusting for possible sample-selection bias using variation from patent examiners’ historical approval rates, and after adjusting for potential endogeneity using …

Director Tenure Diversity And Board Monitoring Effectiveness, Na Li, Aida Sijamic Wahid

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This study examines the impact of director tenure diversity on board effectiveness. We find that tenure-diverse boards exhibit significantly higher CEO performance-turnover sensitivity and that firms with tenure-diverse audit committees are less likely to experience accounting restatements. Furthermore, we document that tenure-diverse compensation committees also award less excess compensation and are less likely to overcompensate. Even though tenure-diverse boards seem to exhibit superior monitoring performance, there is limited evidence that their firms exhibit superior financial performance. The findings suggest that recent calls for board renewal, to the extent that it would increase tenure diversity rather than just decrease average board …

Warrants And Their Underlying Stocks: Microstructure Evidence From An Emerging Market, Charlie Charoenwong, David K. Ding, Nuttawat Visaltanachoti

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The Stock Exchange of Thailand provides an ideal platform for comparing the trading characteristics of warrants and their underlying stocks since both of them trade in the same market under identical trading rules. If their patterns diverge significantly, it may be possible for an astute trader to devise profitable arbitrage strategies during the life of the warrants. We find that both their patterns are downward-sloping for spreads, U-shaped for flow toxicity, volatility, depth concentration, and trading volume; and upward-sloping for depth and market order flow ratio. This implies that trading under identical market structures leads to similar trading characteristics. We …

Assessing The Value Of Ventures: Crowd Investors Vs. Sophisticated Investors, Marco Bade

The Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance

Recent regulatory approaches in crowdfunding democratize capital markets. Adverse wealth effects may arise because of information asymmetry. Firoozi et al. (2017) argue that crowdfunding has wealth-reducing effects on crowd investors because they systematically assign less value to good ventures, and more to bad ventures. This paper aims to take a more differentiated perspective by incorporating two dimensions of uncertainty determining ventures’ value. It further takes into account that different investor types learn different information. This yields new findings concerning the assessment of venture value by crowd investors and sophisticated investors. Crowd investors’ may be able to better assess venture value, …

2018 Q3 Private Capital Access Index Report, Craig R. Everett

Pepperdine Private Capital Access Report

The Pepperdine Private Capital Access Index (PCA) is a quarterly indicator produced by the Pepperdine Graziadio Business School, in partnership with Dun & Bradstreet. The index is designed to measure the demand for, activity, and health of the private capital markets. The purpose of the PCA Index is to gauge the demand of small and medium sized businesses for financing needs, the level of accessibility of private capital, and the transparency and efficiency of private financing markets.

Misconduct And Fraud By Investment Managers, Stephen G. Dimmock, Joseph D. Farizo, William C. Gerken

Finance and Quantitative Methods Research Data

We document the prevalence and variety of frauds committed by investment managers. We show that prior legal and regulatory violations, conflicts-of-interest, and monitoring disclosures available via the Security and Exchange Commission’s Form ADV are useful for predicting fraud. Additional tests show that fraud by rogue employees is more predictable than firm-wide fraud, but both types of fraud are significantly predictable. We revisit the fraud prediction model of Dimmock and Gerken (2012) and test its performance out-of-sample (using fraud cases discovered since that article’s publication). We find the model has significant predictive power for the out-of-sample cases. To encourage additional research …

Revisiting Corporate Financial Policy And The Value Of Cash, Nan Guo

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

Corporate financial policy and the value of cash by Michael Faulkender and Rong Wang (2006) examined the cross sectional variation in the marginal value of corporate cash holdings that arises from differences in the corporate financial policy. The main findings were that the marginal value of cash declines with large cash holdings,higher leverage, and better access to capital market. The goal of this paper is to replicate and extend Faulkender & Wang's (2006) work to test whether their assumptions and results are still valid.

A Return To The Cash Conversion Cycle And Corporate Returns, Madyson Mcpherson

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

A little over twenty years ago, Jose, Lancaster, and Stevens (1996) wrote a paper examining the relationship between profitability and ongoing liquidity management for firms over a twenty-year period, from 1974 to 1993. They test the relationship between the cash conversion cycle, ongoing liquidity management, and other methods of profitability using a regression analysis (Jose, Lancaster, and Stevens, 1996). This paper aims to do the same but with a selection of firms over a different twenty-year period, from 1993 to 2013. We implement Jose et al.’s methodology with updated data to see if contemporary data yields similar results: aggressive working …

Essays In Leveraged Capital Markets, Kenneth D. Ford

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The debt capital markets for leveraged borrowers are ripe with information asymmetry, lender specialization, and borrower segmentation. In this dissertation, I explore how these factors manifest themselves and the economic consequences thereof. Essay 1 shows that adverse selection and moral hazard concerns are inherent in underwriting syndicates that differ in size and number of lead underwriters. Using a nested double selection probit model of syndicate choice, I examine the matching of issuers and underwriters and find that matches of issuer quality and underwriter reputation are positive assortative. Further, switching regressions show that yield spreads reflect uncertainty about the intrinsic values …

Choosing The Precision Of Performance Metrics, Alan D. Crane, Andrew Koch, Chi Shen Wei

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

There is a standard trade-off in contracts between the provision of incentives and insurance. We hypothesize that this trade-off influences the precision with which firm performance is measured. We find that firm outcomes are measured less precisely when chance plays a large role in these outcomes. Further, this precision is determined through the choice of shares outstanding. This has several novel implications. Nominal stock prices can remain constant over time, and firms with unpredictable cash flows should have more shares and lower stock price levels, all else equal. We find evidence consistent with these implications.

Reading Between The Lines: Not All Csr Is Good Csr, David K. Ding, Christo Ferreira, Udomsak Wongchoti

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Purpose: This paper aims to investigate whether corporate social responsibility (CSR), as evidenced in annual financial reports, is associated with a firm’s financial performance in New Zealand. Design/methodology/approach: A word count approach of several key CSR indicators found in the audited financial reports of NZX50 constituent firms is used. Several variables are constructed that measure the presence of CSR within the annual report such as sustainability, responsibility, social, environment, diversity, employee and community, and eight other variables within the annual report that measure the penetration of stakeholder engagement. Control variables and alternative measures of CSR are also included. Descriptive statistics …

Shareholder Protection And Agency Costs: An Experimental Analysis, Jacob Lariviere, Matthew J. Mcmahon, William Neilson

Economics & Finance Faculty Publications

Two competing principal–agent models explain why firms pay dividends. The substitute model proposes that corporate insiders pay dividends to signal and build trust with outside shareholders who lack legal protection. The outcome model, in contrast, surmises that when shareholders have legal protection, they demand dividends from insiders to prevent them from expropriating corporate funds. Either way, dividends represent an agency cost paid to align the interests of shareholders and insiders. Expropriations by insiders and reduced investment by shareholders are also agency costs, but they are difficult to identify with archival data. Using a laboratory experiment, we identify the impact of …

Cross-Country Evidence On The Role Of Independent Media In Constraining Corporate Tax Aggressiveness, Kiridaran Kanagaretnam, Jimmy Lee, Chee Yeow Lim, Gerald J. Lobo

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Using an international sample of firms from 32 countries, we study the relation between media independence and corporate tax aggressiveness. We measure media independence by the extent of private ownership and competition in the media industry. Using an indicator variable for tax aggressiveness when the firm’s corporate tax avoidance measure is within the top quartile of each country-industry combination, we find strong evidence that media independence is associated with a lower likelihood of tax aggressiveness, after controlling for other institutional determinants, including home-country tax system characteristics. We also find that the effect of media independence is more pronounced when the …

Allocation Of Decision Rights Between The Parent Company And Its Subsidiaries, Yuanyuan Liu, Ting Luo, Heng Yue

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This article examines the determinants of allocation of decision rights between the parent company and its subsidiaries, and the economic consequence of suboptimal power structure. Based on China’s unique double disclosure for the parent company and the whole group, we construct a decentralization index to measure how decision rights are allocated within the group companies. We find a more decentralized (centralized) power structure for the groups with more uncertain (certain) external environment and with poorer (better) internal information quality. We also show that the groups with suboptimal power structure have weaker future performance.

Executive Compensation And Cash Contributions To Defined Benefit Pension Plans, Qiang Cheng, Laura Swenson

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Pension contribution has a significant impact on firm valuation, employee benefit, and the financial situation of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC). Using a comprehensive dataset of defined benefit pension (DB) plan contributions, we investigate economic and accounting determinants of pension contributions. We argue that a firm’s pension contribution decision reflects the trade-off between the benefit – reducing the pension liability, and the cost – reducing cash flows from operations and cash available for other purposes. With respect to economic determinants, we find that firms contribute more when funding status is low and when profitability, cash flows from operations and …

Real Estate Risk, Corporate Investment And Financing Choice, Xiaoying Deng, Seow Eng Ong, Meijun Qian

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper empirically examines how real estate risk impacts corporate investment and financing decisions. Using a panel of United States firms from 1985 to 2013, we document that real estate risk is negatively associated with firms’ long-term investments and long-term external financing in equity and debt. The results are robust to different risk measurements and in particular salient during the financial crisis period when the endogeneity between risk and investment is less of a concern. The effect on firm leverage, however, depends on risk measures. Overall, in contrast to previously documented positive effects of the real estate value, real estate …

Essays In Corporate Finance, Nurul Alam Rafi

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation contains two essays in corporate Finance. The first essay is on accelerated share repurchases (ASRs) and the second essay is on corporate inversions.

In my first essay, I investigate the use of stock buybacks, specifically accelerated share repurchases, to meet or beat the analysts’ forecasts of EPS. I find that when the companies want to repurchase their stocks in an effort to meet or beat the EPS expectations, they are more likely to choose accelerated share repurchases (ASRs) rather than open market repurchases (OMRs). Interestingly, upon announcements, these EPS motivated ASRs experience strongest market reaction among all the …

The Impact We Can Make Through Investment: Securing Financial Freedom By Serving Others, Miles A. Flett

Honors Projects

Wage disparity is a major political issue in the United States, but it has far more to do with the health of the economy as a whole. Statistically speaking, it is very difficult for women to participate equally in an economy where they are systematically marginalized. This hurts businesses, it hurts global markets and it damages overall GDP. Statistical data drawn primarily from the Bureau of Labor Statistics underline the differences that women face from various standpoints. Race is a primary influencer, but across the board all women make significantly less than men of the same background for the same …

Shareholder Litigation And Corporate Disclosure: Evidence From Derivative Lawsuits, Thomas Bourveau, Yun Lou, Rencheng Wang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Using the staggered adoption of universal demand (UD) laws in the United States, we study the effect of shareholder litigation risk on corporate disclosure. We find that disclosure significantly increases after UD laws make it more difficult to file derivative lawsuits. Specifically, firms issue more earnings forecasts and voluntary 8-K filings, and increase the length of management discussion and analysis (MD&A) in their 10-K filings. We further assess the direct and indirect channels through which UD laws affect firms' disclosure policies. We find that the effect of UD laws on corporate disclosure is driven by firms facing relatively higher ex …