Download or read book Essays in Institutional Investment and Corporate Capital Structure written by Tian Tang and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays in Corporate Finance written by Yangyang Chen and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Two Essays on Leverage Mergers and Acquisitions and Institutional Investors written by Chune Young Chung and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first essay of my dissertation, I study how bidders' appetite for financial and operating (expected and unexpected) leverage of targets affects merger activities, and whether this appetite varies through the business cycle. I document evidence that bidders have a time-varying appetite for targets' leverages through the business cycle. The effect of financial and operating leverage on the likelihood of becoming a target of a takeover, likelihood of becoming an acquirer, the takeover premium, the announcement CARs of bidders, and long-run BHARs of bidders all depend on the business cycle. The time-varying effects of leverage on merger decisions are consistent with the time-varying benefits of financial and operating leverage, and uniquely capture the well-known time-varying risk in corporate investments.

Download or read book Essays in Corporate Finance written by Adolfo de Motta Gregori and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (Cont.) In addition, I analyze the relationships between the venture capital market and investors' diversity, investors' scope of expertise and entrepreneurial incentives. The third essay, which is co-authored with Andres Almazan, examines how the trading activities of institutional investors can help to mitigate agency conflicts in corporations. The access of institutional investors to privileged information produces an adverse selection effect that reduces the trading activity of institutional investors and generates a free-rider problem that affects the intensity with which institutional investors wish to "vote with their feet". We also study ownership implications, incentives to acquire information and the interaction of the Wall Street Rule with other mechanisms of governance (i.e. capital structure).

Download or read book Three Essays on Institutional Investment written by Nida Abdioglu and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis investigates the investment preferences of institutional investors in the United States (US). In the second chapter, I analyse the impact of both firm and country-level determinants of foreign institutional investment. I find that the governance quality in a foreign institutional investor's (FII) home country is a determinant of their decision to invest in the US market. My findings indicate that investors who come from countries with governance setups similar to that of the US invest more in the United States. The investment levels though, are more pronounced for countries with governance setups just below that of the US. My results are consistent with both the 'flight to quality' and 'familiarity' arguments, and help reconcile prior contradictory empirical evidence. At the firm level, I present unequivocal evidence in favour of the familiarity argument. FII domiciled in countries with high governance quality prefer to invest in US firms with high corporate governance quality. In the third chapter, I investigate the impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) on foreign institutional investment in the United States. I find that, post-SOX, FII increase their equity holdings in US listed firms. This result is mainly driven by passive, non-monitoring FII, who have the most to gain from the SOX-led reduction in firm information asymmetry, and the consequent reduction in the value of private information. The enactment of SOX appears to have changed the firm-level investment preferences of FII towards firms that would not be their traditional investment targets based on prudent man rules, e.g., smaller and riskier firms. In contrast to the extant literature, which mostly documents a negative SOX effect for the US markets, my chapter provides evidence of a positive SOX effect, namely the increase in foreign investment. In the fourth chapter, I examine the effect of SOX on the relation between firm innovation and institutional ownership. I find that US firms investing in innovation attract more institutional capital post-SOX. Prior literature highlights two SOX effects that could cause this result: a decreased level of information asymmetry (direct effect) and increased market liquidity (indirect effect). My findings support the direct effect, as I find that the positive relation between innovation and institutional ownership is driven by passive and dedicated institutional investors. A reduction in firms' information asymmetry is beneficial for these investors while they gain less from increased market liquidity. Overall, my results indicate that SOX is an important policy that has strengthened the institutional investor's support for firm innovation.

Download or read book Two Essays on Investments written by Jie Zhu and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In my dissertation, I study factors that influence investments from either corporate or institutional perspective. First, I examine the sensitivity of corporate investment to internally generated cash flow and its pattern of change over time across countries. Second, I investigate how a firm's customer profile can shape its ownership structure of institutional investors. Existing studies have documented a puzzling disappearance of investment-cash flow (ICF) sensitivity in the U.S.. In the first chapter, I explore whether economic and financial development can explain the extent of a country's ICF sensitivity and its evolution through time. I find that, in aggregate, ICF sensitivity has also faded around the world; yet it has remained high in countries with low economic and financial development. Further, I find that the access to external finance, especially equity finance, is a key channel through which country-level development affects the sensitivity of investment to internal cash flow. In more developed countries, external finance has become more accessible for firms when their internal cash flow is insufficient, thereby reducing their reliance on internal cash flow. The results indicate that once a country advances to a certain degree of financial and economic development, it becomes more efficient in allocating resources and therefore financial constraints at the individual firm level become less binding. A growing literature has documented different financial implications of a concentrated customer base. In the second chapter, I examine how customer concentration affects institutional investors' investment decisions. I find that a firm's customer concentration tends to attract different groups of institutional investors, depending upon their investment horizons. Specifically, those institutions who trade actively (short-term) would buy the stocks of firms with a more concentrated customer base. Conversely, those institutions who trade less actively (long-term) would buy the stocks of firms with a less concentrated customer base. While the preference of long-term investors is supported by the increased risk associated with the dependency on a few large customers, I find that the improved stock liquidity is the channel through which a concentrated customer base attracts short-term investors. Further, my findings cannot be explained by information transfer along the supply chain.

Download or read book Essays in Corporate Finance and Financial Institutions written by Adam Kolasinski and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 123 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chi: Subsidiary Debt, Capital Structure, and Internal Capital Markets I investigate external subsidiary debt financing and its implications for internal capital markets. I find that firms tend to finance business segments with subsidiary debt when those segments have better investment opportunities than the rest of the firm, and such debt tends to be parent-guaranteed. I also find that having such debt outstanding significantly reduces the effect of a segment's cash flow on the capital expenditures of other segments. These findings suggest that firms use subsidiary debt to protect their stronger segments from the underfunding or "poaching" problems modeled in theories of internal capital markets. In addition, I find that firms use subsidiary debt for reasons related to traditional capital structure concerns. Ch2: Is the Chinese Wall too High? I test whether new regulatory restrictions on cooperation between analysts and investment bankers adversely affect equity research coverage. Contrary to the hypothesis, I find that firms engaging in SEO's enjoy just as large an increase in analyst coverage in the post-regulatory period as they do in the pre-regulatory period.

Download or read book Essays in Corporate Finance written by Bruno d Laranjeira and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis presents two essays in Corporate Finance. In the first essay, I use the August 2007 crisis episode to gauge the effect of financial contracting on real firm behavior. I identify heterogeneity in financial contracting at the onset of the crisis by exploiting ex-ante variation in long-term debt maturity structure. Using a difference-in-differences matching estimator approach, I find that firms whose long-term debt was largely maturing right after the third quarter of 2007 cut their investment-to-capital ratio by 2.5 percentage points more (on a quarterly basis) than otherwise similar firms whose debt was scheduled to mature after 2008. This drop in investment is statistically and economically significant, representing one-third of pre-crisis investment levels. A number of falsification and placebo tests suggest that my inferences are not confounded with other factors. For example, in the absence of a credit contraction, the maturity composition of long-term debt has no effect on investment. Moreover, long-term debt maturity composition had no impact on investment during the crisis for firms for which long-term debt was not a major source of funding. Our analysis highlights the importance of debt maturity for corporate financial policy. More than showing a general association between credit markets and real activity, my analysis shows how the credit channel operates through a specific feature of financial contracting. In the second essay, I analyze how institutional investors choose which Initial Public Offering to invest. Using a sample of IPOs from 1980 to 2004, I show that the reputation of the lead underwriter is the most significant variable in this decision process. Using Carter-Manaster rankings of underwriter reputation, I report that a one point increase in the reputation ranking leads to a 2% increase in institutional investors` holding. Moreover, I test hypotheses about what kind of certification the underwriter is providing. I provide evidence that underwriters certify un-measurable characteristics, in contrast to measurable characteristics, such as those provided in the financial statements of the issuer.

Download or read book Essays on Capital Structure and Firm Investment written by Yiming Xu and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this thesis, I study the interactions between firms' capital structure and real decisions. First, I investigate how a firm's financial leverage will impact its investment contingent on whether future growth opportunities are anticipated. Second, I test the under and over investment hypothesis related to debt financing contingent on whether the firm is likely to under or over invest. Last, I investigate how a firm's production technology can impact its production and capital structure decisions. In Chapter 1, I investigate the impact of anticipations of future growth opportunities on leverage-investment interactions. I show that when growth opportunities are unanticipated, the negative impact of leverage on investment is up to two times larger than when they are anticipated. The presence of institutional stockholdings significantly reduces the under investment problem. An instrumental variable analysis reveals that the leverage-investment relationship is weak when the problem of endogeneity is controlled. The results provide strong evidence that Canadian firms take ex ante leverage adjustments to mitigate the debt overhang problem. Chapter 2 studies the extent to which leverage-investment interactions depend on the level of initial investment as well future investment opportunities in US firms. I find a strong negative relationship between leverage and investment for firms with low levels of (initial) investment and high investment opportunities. I also find a positive relationship between leverage and investment for firms with high levels of (initial) investment and low growth opportunities. I distinguish between Tobin's Average Q and Marginal Q as proxies for firms' investment opportunities and propose a novel method to estimate Marginal Q. Chapter 3 is a joint work with Varouj Aivazian. In this chapter, we investigate the interactions between the flexibility of a firm's production and its financial structure. This chapter shows that production flexibility is an important factor explaining the cross sectional variations in financial leverage among U.S. firms. Alternative empirical measures of production flexibility are all shown to be positively associated with financial leverage. This chapter also develops a novel measure of inter-temporal production flexibility and identifies important linkages between production and financing decisions.

Download or read book Three Essays on Institutional Investors written by Ligang Zhong and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this dissertation, I investigate the impact of institutional investors on security prices and corporate policies, and offer a new perspective on the vital role that institutional investors play in the modern capital market. Specifically, on the impact on security price movements, I design a new measure of stock-level sentiment based on mutual fund publically disclosed portfolio information and provide a new dimension to better predict stock returns. A trading strategy based on the new sentiment metrics can generate an annualized alpha of 21.27%. The abnormal returns cannot be explained by the time-varying expected returns and transaction costs, and can be best explained by mutual fund overreactions. Hence, my findings can be interpreted as a new anomaly in a new era-when institutional investors are the marginal traders. On the impact on corporate policy side, I document two pieces of new empirical evidence on the importance of long-term institutional holdings: the entrenchment effect of long-term institutional holdings in the context of corporate financing decisions and the active monitoring role of long-term institutional investors in the context of international firms' accounting qualities. Combined with previous studies which favour a long-term institutional investor, the evidence on the cost side of long-term holding I document here can serve as the first call for an optimal investment horizon for firms operating in the U.S.

Download or read book Institutional Money Management written by David M. Smith and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-10-27 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An informative look at institutional investment management methods and practice The policies, practices, and decisions of institutional investment managers worldwide affect the economic health of not only the institutions themselves, but of countless individual clients as well. Overall, this area of finance has great impact on the capital markets. Filled with in-depth insights and practical advice, Institutional Money Management is an important basis of knowledge regarding both the theory and practice of this ever-evolving area of finance. Part of the Robert W. Kolb Series in Finance, this book on institutional investment management showcases contributed chapters from professional and academic experts in banking, insurance companies, mutual funds, pension funds, and endowments. Along the way, issues covered included everything from the role of institutional investors within the financial system and the structures that have emerged and evolved to industry standards of ethical practice and investment performance presentation. Provides a detailed examination of the objectives, constraints, methods, and stakeholders for the dominant types of institutional investors Focuses on the portfolio management strategies and techniques used by institutional investors Contains contributed chapters from numerous thought-leaders in the field of finance The practice of institutional investment management presents a diverse set of challenges. But with this book as your guide, you'll gain a better understanding of how you can overcome these challenges and manage your portfolio more effectively.

Download or read book What is the Role of Institutional Investors in Corporate Capital Structure Decisions A Survey Analysis written by Stephen Brown and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We survey institutional investors about their role in capital structure decisions and views on capital structure theories. Over 82% of investors believe they influence corporate capital structure decisions, especially for smaller, younger, and more financially constrained firms. Unlike corporate managers, investors consider agency costs of free cash flow important drivers of capital structure. Investors' responses also support pecking order and market timing theory. Most investors find financial constraints important, with components of the Kaplan-Zingales and Whited-Wu indexes dominating other proxies. Our findings suggest a first-order impact of investor preferences on securities issuance and design choices.

Download or read book Three Essays on Institutional Investors and Corporate Governance written by Rasha Ashraf and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first essay analyzes mutual funds' proxy voting records on shareholder proposals. The results indicate that mutual funds support shareholder proposals and vote against management for proposals that are likely to increase shareholders' wealth and rights, in firms with weaker external monitoring mechanisms, in firms with entrenched management, and when funds have longer investment horizon. Mutual funds mostly take management sides on executive compensation related proposals, when they have higher ownership concentration, and when they belong to bigger fund families. The results further indicate that there is a positive reputational effect for the funds undertaking a monitoring role. Moreover, mutual funds reduce holdings when they disapprove of managements' policy, but before doing so they take on an activist role by supporting shareholder proposals. The second essay investigates institutional investors' trading behavior of acquiring firm stocks surrounding merger activities. We label investment companies and independent investment advisors as active institutions and banks, nonbank trusts and insurance companies as passive institutions. We find active institutions increase holdings of acquiring firm stocks for mergers with higher wealth implications. However, active institutions overreact to stock mergers at the announcement, which they appear to correct at the resolution quarter of the merger. The trading behavior of passive institutions suggests that these institutions disregard the market response of merger announcement in trading acquiring firm stocks at the announcement quarter. The passive institutions gradually update their beliefs and trade on the basis of merger wealth effect at the resolution quarter. The third essay examines relation between executive compensation structure with the existing level and changes of takeover defense mechanisms of firms. According to "managerial entrenchment hypothesis," higher managerial power from adoption of takeover defense mechanisms would lead to generating higher rents for executives. "Efficient contracting hypothesis" argue that higher anti-takeover provisions would contribute in achieving efficient contracting by deferring compensation into the future due to the low possibility of hostile takeover. The results support managerial entrenchment hypothesis with regard to existing level of takeover defense mechanisms. With regard to changes in anti-takeover provisions, the existing level of managerial power influence the future pay structure.

Download or read book Three Essays in Corporate Finance and Institutional Investors written by Jiekun Huang and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays in External Corporate Governance written by Abhishek Ganguly and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My dissertation comprises three essays that address several unanswered and unsettled questions on the role of institutional investors as external monitors. In the first chapter titled, "Media and Shareholder Activism," using more than twenty-five million firm-level media articles, I examine the role of media in shareholder activism events from 2002 to 2014. I find that conditioning on numerous observable firm-specific characteristics and unobservables, broader and negative ex-ante media coverage, is positively associated with the probability of a firm being a shareholder activist's target. I further document that media coverage also plays a crucial role in determining the outcomes of activism events. Target firms with ex-ante positive media coverage not only have significantly lower announcement returns but also have a higher likelihood of management winning. The second chapter titled, "CEO Overconfidence and Shareholder Activism," relies on extensive behavioral corporate finance theory and empirically explores whether managerial overconfidence is associated with hedge-fund activists' target selection and activism outcomes. Predictions from theoretical models point in different directions: activists mitigate overconfidence or activists avoid overconfident managers. We find evidence that hedge-fund activists are less likely to target firms with overconfident CEOs, after controlling for various firm and CEO characteristics and fixed effects. In the third chapter, "Hedge Fund Activism and Capital Structure," using a comprehensive sample of hedge-fund activism from 1994 to 2018 in the U.S., and closest propensity score-matched firms, we study whether hedge-fund activists influence the capital structures of targeted firms. We find that for over-levered firms, there is a significant positive association between firms' distance away from the target leverage and their likelihood of being targeted by an activist hedge-fund. However, rebalancing of leverage toward their target debt ratios post-hedge fund activist intervention is observed only among under-levered firms. Our findings are broadly consistent with the dynamic trade-off models of capital structure, where adjustment costs and agency benefits of leverage play a crucial role.

Download or read book Two Essays on Formal Institutions and Debt Finance written by Mengyuan Li and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second essay is on institution and capital structure. Previous studies have examined how various institutional factors (e.g., Index of legal efficiency, Integrity of the legal environment and Corruption perception index) affect capital structure (e.g., Demirguc-Kunt and Maksimovic, 1999; Fan et al., 2011). The second essay focuses on how a country's electoral system may influence firms' capital structure choices. Pagano and Volpin (2005) show that employment protection is stronger in proportional electoral systems than majoritarian electoral system, while investor protection is weaker in proportional electoral systems than majoritarian electoral system. In a proportional electoral system, managers and controlling shareholders tend to issue more debt to protect their interests from employees' requirement of higher compensations. On the other hand, investors in a proportional electoral system are less protected in the stock market so they participate more in the debt market. Furthermore, entrepreneurs in proportional electoral systems are more political powerful and hence can easier to borrow debt with longer maturities. Empirical tests are conducted using firm-year data from 1994 to 2009 in 34 countries. I find that firms issue more debt and more long-term debt in countries with proportional electoral system than those with majoritarian electoral system. In summary, electoral system is an important determinant of firms' capital structure across country.

Download or read book Three Essays on Corporate Governance and Institutional Investors written by Vyacheslav Fos and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation analyzes the role of institutional investors in corporate governance. The first essay studies the effect of potential proxy contests on corporate policies. I find that when the likelihood of a proxy contest increases, companies exhibit increases in leverage, dividends, and CEO turnover. In addition, companies decrease R&D, capital expenditures, stock repurchases, and executive compensation. Following these changes, there is an improvement in profitability. The second essay investigates the optimal contract with an informed money manager. Motivated by simple structure of portfolio managers' compensation and complex risk structure of returns, I show that it may be optimal for the principal to stay unaware about the true risk structure of returns. The third essay analyzes the biases related to self-reporting in the hedge funds databases by matching the quarterly equity holdings of a complete list of 13F-filing hedge fund companies to the union of five major commercial databases of self-reporting hedge funds between 1980 and 2008.