Corporate Governance and Dividend Policy When Investor Protection Is Weak

Corporate Governance and Dividend Policy When Investor Protection Is Weak PDF Author: Morad Abdel-Halim
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 26

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Book Description
We investigate the relationship between firm's dividend policy and the corporate governance mechanism, measured by firm's ownership structure, in an emerging market characterized by weak corporate governance system and ineffective law enforcement. Evidence is drawn from non financial corporations over the period 2004-2008 using several econometric models with different specifications that account for firm-specific unobservable variables. We find a significant negative relationship between firm's dividend payout ratio and its percentage of capital owned by blockholders. This result implies that large shareholders are either expropriating the rights of minority shareholders or that firm's earnings are being used to finance its future investments. Our results support the first implication as we find that the negative impact of large shareholders' capital stake on dividend payments is robust and unchanged when firm's sales growth is controlled for.

Corporate Governance and Dividend Policy When Investor Protection Is Weak

Corporate Governance and Dividend Policy When Investor Protection Is Weak PDF Author: Morad Abdel-Halim
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 26

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Book Description
We investigate the relationship between firm's dividend policy and the corporate governance mechanism, measured by firm's ownership structure, in an emerging market characterized by weak corporate governance system and ineffective law enforcement. Evidence is drawn from non financial corporations over the period 2004-2008 using several econometric models with different specifications that account for firm-specific unobservable variables. We find a significant negative relationship between firm's dividend payout ratio and its percentage of capital owned by blockholders. This result implies that large shareholders are either expropriating the rights of minority shareholders or that firm's earnings are being used to finance its future investments. Our results support the first implication as we find that the negative impact of large shareholders' capital stake on dividend payments is robust and unchanged when firm's sales growth is controlled for.

Investor Protection and Corporate Governance

Investor Protection and Corporate Governance PDF Author: Alberto Chong
Publisher: A copublication of Stanford Economics and Finance
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 596

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Book Description
Investor Protection in Latin America represents the largest data-gathering effort of firm-level corporate governance practices, ownership structures, and dividend policies. The results presented show that on top of country-wide legal protection of investors, there is a positive effect on valuation and performance of higher firm-level protections and better corporate governance practices. This evidence matches previous research in the area for other regions of the world.

Dividend Policy and Corporate Governance

Dividend Policy and Corporate Governance PDF Author: Luis Correia da Silva
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191531812
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
Dividends are not only a signal about a firm's prospects under asymmetric information, but they can also act as a corporate governance device to align the management's interests with those of the shareholders. Dividend Policy and Corporate Governance is the first comprehensive volume on the relationship between dividend policy and corporate governance, and examines in detail empirical studies and current theories. Reviewing the interactions between dividend policy and other corporate governance mechanisms, it compares results for the UK and the US with those for other countries such as France, Germany, and Japan, and provides new empirical evidence on corporate governance in continental Europe and its impact on dividends. Focusing on one of the main representatives of this system, Germany, it highlights major differences between the dividend policies of German firms and those of UK or US firms. Conventional wisdom states that German dividends are lower than UK or US dividends, yet on a published-profits basis the exact converse is true. In addition, the authors demonstrate a link between corporate control structures and dividend payouts, report evidence that the existence of a loss is an additional determinant of dividend changes, and demonstrate that the tax status of the controlling shareholder and the firm's dividend payout are not linked. The conclusions reached in this book have important implications for the current debate on corporate governance, making it invaluable for academics, finance professionals, regulators, and legal advisors.

Corporate Governance and Dividend Policy in Emerging Markets

Corporate Governance and Dividend Policy in Emerging Markets PDF Author: Todd Mitton
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 31

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Book Description
In a sample of 365 firms from 19 countries, I show that firms with stronger corporate governance have higher dividend payouts, consistent with agency models of dividends. In addition, the negative relationship between dividend payouts and growth opportunities is stronger among firms with better governance. I also show that firms with stronger governance are more profitable, but that greater profitability explains only part of the higher dividend payouts. The positive relationship between corporate governance and dividend payouts is limited primarily to countries with strong investor protection, suggesting that firm-level corporate governance and country-level investor protection are complements rather than substitutes.

Effect of Enhancing Investor Protection Under Corporate Governance Reform

Effect of Enhancing Investor Protection Under Corporate Governance Reform PDF Author: 李德冠
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


The Effects of Firm- and Country-Level Governance Mechanisms on Dividend Policy, Cash Holdings, and Firm Value

The Effects of Firm- and Country-Level Governance Mechanisms on Dividend Policy, Cash Holdings, and Firm Value PDF Author: Rongrong Zhang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 35

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Book Description
This study examines the effects of firm and country-level corporate governance mechanisms on dividend and cash holding policies and their joint impact on firm value using a sample of over 3,000 listed firms from 21 countries. Using multivariate regression analyses, I find that at the firm-level, the excess control held by the largest owner is (1) negatively related to dividend payment; (2) positively related to cash holdings; and (3) negatively related to Tobin's Q; furthermore, I find positive valuation effects of dividends and cash holdings. However, these effects depend on the ownership structure of the firm. Dividend payments have incremental positive valuation effect for firms with entrenched owners while cash holdings have negative valuation effect for this type of firms. Considering the endogenous nature of firm policies, I then use a simultaneous equations model to test the interdependence of firm policy choices and firm value. The results indicate that these policies are interrelated and jointly affect firm value. Using the legal protection of investor as a proxy for country-level corporate governance mechanism, I find that firms operating in countries with poor investor protections make low dividend payments, have high cash holdings, and have low firm value, supporting the findings of La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes, Shleifer, and Vishny (2000a, 2002) and Dittmar et al. (2003). In addition, I find that investor protection mitigates the adverse effect of excess control by forcing controlling shareholders to disgorge cash. High cash holding is beneficial only if outside investors rights are well protected.

Investor Protection

Investor Protection PDF Author: Rafael La Porta
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Corporate governance
Languages : en
Pages : 42

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Book Description
Recent research has documented large differences between countries in ownership concentration in publicly traded firms, in the breadth and depth of capital markets, in dividend policies, and in the access of firms to external finance. We suggest that there is a common element to the explanations of these differences, namely how well investors, both shareholders and creditors, are protected by law from expropriation by the managers and controlling shareholders of firms. We describe the differences in laws and the effectiveness of their enforcement across countries, discuss the possible origins of these differences, summarize their consequences, and assess potential strategies of corporate governance reform. We argue that the legal approach is a more fruitful way to understand corporate governance and its reform than the conventional distinction between bank-centered and market-centered financial systems

Investor Protection and Corporate Governance

Investor Protection and Corporate Governance PDF Author: Mark L. DeFond
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 64

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Book Description
Recent research asserts that an essential feature of good corporate governance is strong investor protection, where investor protection is defined as both (1) the extent of the laws that protect investors' rights and (2) the strength of the legal institutions that facilitate law enforcement. The purpose of this study is to test whether the two components of investor protection are associated with an important role of good corporate governance: identifying and terminating poorly performing CEOs. Our tests find no relation between CEO turnover and firm performance in countries with extensive laws protecting investors. However, we find that CEO turnover is associated with poor firm performance in countries with strong law enforcement institutions. We also find that in countries with strong law enforcement, CEO turnover is associated with poor stock returns when stock prices are more informative, and with poor earnings otherwise. Further, our findings are robust to controlling for the influence of public opinion, the effects of block-holders, the level of financial market development, a country's legal origin, and several alternative research design specifications.Our results suggest that strong law enforcement institutions are important in fostering corporate governance mechanisms that eliminate unfit CEOs, but that extensive laws are not. This finding is consistent with: (1) limited investor protection laws being capable of cultivating good corporate governance as long as law enforcement institutions are strong; and (2) insiders (including directors and CEOs) in countries with weak law enforcement being more likely to engage in collusive behavior to expropriate shareholder wealth, thereby reducing directors' incentives to dismiss poorly performing CEOs. More generally these findings suggest that good corporate governance requires law enforcement institutions capable of protecting shareholders' property rights (i.e. protecting shareholders from expropriation by insiders), but does not require extensive shareholder protection laws.

Investor Protection

Investor Protection PDF Author: Rafael La Porta
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 44

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Book Description
Recent research has documented large differences between countries in ownership concentration in publicly traded firms, in the breadth and depth of capital markets, in dividend policies, and in the access of firms to external finance. We suggest that there is a common element to the explanations of these differences, namely how well investors, both shareholders and creditors, are protected by law from expropriation by the managers and controlling shareholders of firms. We describe the differences in laws and the effectiveness of their enforcement across countries, discuss the possible origins of these differences, summarize their consequences, and assess potential strategies of corporate governance reform. We argue that the legal approach is a more fruitful way to understand corporate governance and its reform than the conventional distinction between bank-centered and market-centered financial systems.

Corporate Payout Policy

Corporate Payout Policy PDF Author: Harry DeAngelo
Publisher: Now Publishers Inc
ISBN: 1601982046
Category : Corporations
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
Corporate Payout Policy synthesizes the academic research on payout policy and explains "how much, when, and how". That is (i) the overall value of payouts over the life of the enterprise, (ii) the time profile of a firm's payouts across periods, and (iii) the form of those payouts. The authors conclude that today's theory does a good job of explaining the general features of corporate payout policies, but some important gaps remain. So while our emphasis is to clarify "what we know" about payout policy, the authors also identify a number of interesting unresolved questions for future research. Corporate Payout Policy discusses potential influences on corporate payout policy including managerial use of payouts to signal future earnings to outside investors, individuals' behavioral biases that lead to sentiment-based demands for distributions, the desire of large block stockholders to maintain corporate control, and personal tax incentives to defer payouts. The authors highlight four important "carry-away" points: the literature's focus on whether repurchases will (or should) drive out dividends is misplaced because it implicitly assumes that a single payout vehicle is optimal; extant empirical evidence is strongly incompatible with the notion that the primary purpose of dividends is to signal managers' views of future earnings to outside investors; over-confidence on the part of managers is potentially a first-order determinant of payout policy because it induces them to over-retain resources to invest in dubious projects and so behavioral biases may, in fact, turn out to be more important than agency costs in explaining why investors pressure firms to accelerate payouts; the influence of controlling stockholders on payout policy --- particularly in non-U.S. firms, where controlling stockholders are common --- is a promising area for future research. Corporate Payout Policy is required reading for both researchers and practitioners interested in understanding this central topic in corporate finance and governance.