Three Essays on Corporate Innovation and Shareholder Activism

Three Essays on Corporate Innovation and Shareholder Activism PDF Author: Yifei Zhang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
The first chapter studies whether and how corporate venture capital (CVC) spurs changes in firm scope. Using two sets of firm scope metrics, a text-based emerging business measure and Compustat segment measures, I document that CVC investments are strongly associated with subsequent firm scope changes of the CVC corporate parent, including seeding emerging businesses, establishing new divisions, terminating obsolete divisions, and changing the primary industry. Further evidence is consistent with an experimentation view of CVC investments, with more promising ventures having a stronger impact on scope changes of parent firms. Finally, to sharpen the causality, I explore idiosyncratic fund inflow shocks of those connected independent VCs for each CVC program, as well as the US non-stop airline routes.In the second chapter, we investigate the impact of hedge fund activism on corporate transaction markets. We find that activism targets as well as firms exposed to hedge fund threats receive more merger bids, increase divestitures and make fewer acquisitions, with the acquisition effect concentrated among large firms. We document that the majority of activist campaigns are clustered by industry, and estimate that the simultaneous increase in asset sales and decrease in acquisitions in such activism clusters reduce real asset liquidity for asset sellers by about 35%. The liquidity squeeze produces two effects: transaction prices are reduced, and industry outsiders provide liquidity by purchasing more industry assets. Looking at short-term price pressure and long-run performance, we present evidence that transactions by activist targets are less affected by the reduced asset liquidity than those of other firms.The third chapter investigates which kind of targeted firms benefit the most from hedge fund activism campaigns. I first document that ex-ante better governance firms experience larger value and performance improvements after activism campaigns. Moreover, good governance firms operating in relatively competitive industries benefit the most from hedge fund activism campaigns among all targeted firms. Both results are counter-intuitive since ex-ante good governance firms operating in relatively competitive industries should suffer the least from agency costs and have already operated on the industry efficiency frontier. As a result, further value improvements should be minimal. I provide a new explanation for the puzzling results through the success likelihood of activist campaigns and value improvement conditional on campaign success.

Three Essays on Corporate Innovation and Shareholder Activism

Three Essays on Corporate Innovation and Shareholder Activism PDF Author: Yifei Zhang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
The first chapter studies whether and how corporate venture capital (CVC) spurs changes in firm scope. Using two sets of firm scope metrics, a text-based emerging business measure and Compustat segment measures, I document that CVC investments are strongly associated with subsequent firm scope changes of the CVC corporate parent, including seeding emerging businesses, establishing new divisions, terminating obsolete divisions, and changing the primary industry. Further evidence is consistent with an experimentation view of CVC investments, with more promising ventures having a stronger impact on scope changes of parent firms. Finally, to sharpen the causality, I explore idiosyncratic fund inflow shocks of those connected independent VCs for each CVC program, as well as the US non-stop airline routes.In the second chapter, we investigate the impact of hedge fund activism on corporate transaction markets. We find that activism targets as well as firms exposed to hedge fund threats receive more merger bids, increase divestitures and make fewer acquisitions, with the acquisition effect concentrated among large firms. We document that the majority of activist campaigns are clustered by industry, and estimate that the simultaneous increase in asset sales and decrease in acquisitions in such activism clusters reduce real asset liquidity for asset sellers by about 35%. The liquidity squeeze produces two effects: transaction prices are reduced, and industry outsiders provide liquidity by purchasing more industry assets. Looking at short-term price pressure and long-run performance, we present evidence that transactions by activist targets are less affected by the reduced asset liquidity than those of other firms.The third chapter investigates which kind of targeted firms benefit the most from hedge fund activism campaigns. I first document that ex-ante better governance firms experience larger value and performance improvements after activism campaigns. Moreover, good governance firms operating in relatively competitive industries benefit the most from hedge fund activism campaigns among all targeted firms. Both results are counter-intuitive since ex-ante good governance firms operating in relatively competitive industries should suffer the least from agency costs and have already operated on the industry efficiency frontier. As a result, further value improvements should be minimal. I provide a new explanation for the puzzling results through the success likelihood of activist campaigns and value improvement conditional on campaign success.

Three Essays on Corporate Innovations

Three Essays on Corporate Innovations PDF Author: Lilei Xu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description
This thesis consists of three essays on corporate R&D and innovations in the United States.

Three Essays in Financial Markets. The Bright Side of Financial Derivatives: Options Trading and Firm Innovation

Three Essays in Financial Markets. The Bright Side of Financial Derivatives: Options Trading and Firm Innovation PDF Author: Iván Blanco
Publisher: Ed. Universidad de Cantabria
ISBN: 8481028770
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 90

Get Book Here

Book Description
Do financial derivatives enhance or impede innovation? We aim to answer this question by examining the relationship between equity options markets and standard measures of firm innovation. Our baseline results show that firms with more options trading activity generate more patents and patent citations per dollar of R&D invested. We then investigate how more active options markets affect firms' innovation strategy. Our results suggest that firms with greater trading activity pursue a more creative, diverse and risky innovation strategy. We discuss potential underlying mechanisms and show that options appear to mitigate managerial career concerns that would induce managers to take actions that boost short-term performance measures. Finally, using several econometric specifications that try to account for the potential endogeneity of options trading, we argue that the positive effect of options trading on firm innovation is causal.

Essays on Corporate Innovation

Essays on Corporate Innovation PDF Author: Lai Van Vo
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description


Hedge Fund Activism

Hedge Fund Activism PDF Author: Alon Brav
Publisher: Now Publishers Inc
ISBN: 1601983387
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 76

Get Book Here

Book Description
Hedge Fund Activism begins with a brief outline of the research literature and describes datasets on hedge fund activism.

Two Essays on Corporate Innovation

Two Essays on Corporate Innovation PDF Author: Hua-Hsin Tsai
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the first chapter, I examine the relationship between institutional investors' distraction and innovation. Institutional investor distraction means that these institutional investors get distracted when they perceive either positive or negative information from other stocks in their portfolio. Prior studies suggest institutional holdings provide stable funding for firm managers and thus allow them to pursue long term innovation (stability hypothesis). However, the level of institutional holdings is also a proxy for the level of attention given by these institutions (attention hypothesis). I address this debate by utilizing the investor distraction measure of Kempf, Manconi, and Spalt (2017) and find that institutional investors' distraction reduces firm patent filings, citations, and quality, supporting the attention hypothesis. The effect is concentrated in firms owned by institutions providing beneficial monitoring but limited attention: passive institutions, independent institutions, and institutions with a low ownership concentration in the firm. The test shows that investor distraction impacts innovation via the monitoring channel or the information channel. In my second essay, I investigate the relationship between a firm's external financing needs and the extent of technology spillovers that the firm experiences. Reliance on external funds is captured by the firm's level of external financial dependence (EFD) firm. My empirical results indicate that firms with higher technology spillover have lower external financial dependence.

Dear Chairman

Dear Chairman PDF Author: Jeff Gramm
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062369849
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 263

Get Book Here

Book Description
A sharp and illuminating history of one of capitalism’s longest running tensions—the conflicts of interest among public company directors, managers, and shareholders—told through entertaining case studies and original letters from some of our most legendary and controversial investors and activists. Recent disputes between shareholders and major corporations, including Apple and DuPont, have made headlines. But the struggle between management and those who own stock has been going on for nearly a century. Mixing never-before-published and rare, original letters from Wall Street icons—including Benjamin Graham, Warren Buffett, Ross Perot, Carl Icahn, and Daniel Loeb—with masterful scholarship and professional insight, Dear Chairman traces the rise in shareholder activism from the 1920s to today, and provides an invaluable and unprecedented perspective on what it means to be a public company, including how they work and who is really in control. Jeff Gramm analyzes different eras and pivotal boardroom battles from the last century to understand the factors that have caused shareholders and management to collide. Throughout, he uses the letters to show how investors interact with directors and managers, how they think about their target companies, and how they plan to profit. Each is a fascinating example of capitalism at work told through the voices of its most colorful, influential participants. A hedge fund manager and an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School, Gramm has spent as much time evaluating CEOs and directors as he has trying to understand and value businesses. He has seen public companies that are poorly run, and some that willfully disenfranchise their shareholders. While he pays tribute to the ingenuity of public company investors, Gramm also exposes examples of shareholder activism at its very worst, when hedge funds engineer stealthy land-grabs at the expense of a company’s long term prospects. Ultimately, he provides a thorough, much-needed understanding of the public company/shareholder relationship for investors, managers, and everyone concerned with the future of capitalism.

The Foundations and Anatomy of Shareholder Activism

The Foundations and Anatomy of Shareholder Activism PDF Author: Iris H-Y Chiu
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1847316042
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 204

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Foundations and Anatomy of Shareholder Activism examines the landscape of contemporary shareholder activism in the UK. The book focuses on minority shareholder activism in publicly listed companies. It argues that contemporary shareholder activism in the UK is dominated by two groups; one, the institutional shareholders whose shareholder activism is largely seen as a driving force for good corporate governance, and two, the hedge funds whose shareholder activism is based on value extraction and exit. The book provides a detailed examination of both types of shareholder activism, and discusses critically the nature of, motivations for and consequences following both types of shareholder activism. The book then locates both types of shareholder activism in the theory of the company and the fabric of company law, and argues that institutional shareholder activism based on exercising a voice at general meetings is well supported in theory and law. The call for institutions to engage in more informal forms of activism in the name of 'stewardship' may bring about challenges to the current patterns of activism that institutions engage in. The book argues, however, that a more cautious view of hedge fund activism and the pattern of value extraction and exit should be taken. More empirical evidence is likely to be necessary, however, to weigh up the long terms benefits and costs of hedge fund activism.

Essays on Corporate Innovation Strategy and Corporate Disclosure

Essays on Corporate Innovation Strategy and Corporate Disclosure PDF Author: Jing Yang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description


Essays in Corporate Finance

Essays in Corporate Finance PDF Author: Julian D. Atanassov
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 420

Get Book Here

Book Description