Value-creation through spin-offs: Australian evidence

Purpose– Communication of risk management (RM) practices are a critical component of good corporate governance. Research, to date, has been of little benefit in informing regulators internationally. This paper seeks to contribute to the literature by investigating how listed Australian companies disclose RM information in annual report governance statements in accordance with the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) corporate governance framework.Design/methodology/approach– To address this study’s research questions and related hypotheses, the authors examine the top 300 ASX-listed companies by market capitalisation at 30 June 2010. For these firms, the authors identify, code and categorise RM disclosures made in the annual according to the disclosure categories specified in ASX Corporate Governance Principles and Recommendations (CGPR). The derived data are then examined using a comprehensive approach comprising thematic content analysis and regression analysis.Findings– The results indicate widespread divergence in disclosure practices and low conformance with the Principle 7 of the ASX CGPR. This result suggests that companies are not disclosing all “material business risks” possibly due to ignorance at the board level, or due to the intentional withholding of sensitive information from financial statement users. The findings also show mixed results across the factors expected to influence disclosure behaviour. While the presence of a risk committee (RC) (in particular, a standalone RC) and technology committee (TC) are found to be associated with some improvement in disclosure levels, the authors do not find evidence that company risk measures (as proxied by equity beta and the market-to-book ratio) are significantly associated with greater levels of RM disclosure. Also, contrary to common findings in the disclosure literature, factors such as board independence and expertise, audit committee independence and the usage of a Big-4 auditor do not seem to impact the level of RM disclosure in the Australian context.Research limitations/implications– The study is limited by the sample and study period selection as the RM disclosures of only the largest (top 300) ASX firms are examined for the fiscal year 2010. Thus, the findings may not be generalisable to smaller firms or earlier/later years. Also, the findings may have limited applicability in other jurisdictions with different regulatory environments.Practical implications– The study’s findings suggest that insufficient attention has been applied to RM disclosures by listed companies in Australia. These results suggest RM disclosures practices observed in the Australian setting may not be meeting the objectives of regulators and the needs of stakeholders.Originality/value– The Australian setting provides an ideal environment to examine RM communication as the ASX has explicitly recommended RM disclosures areas in its principle-based governance rules since 2007 (Principle 7). This differs from other jurisdictions where such disclosure recommendations are typically not provided and provides us with a benchmark to examine the nature and quality of RM disclosures. Despite the recommendation, the authors reveal that low levels and poor RM communication are prevalent in the Australian setting and warrant further investigation.

Information asymmetry and the cost of equity capital

<p>Corporate disclosure has attracted the attention of researchers from the accounting and capital markets. Researchers have been trying to better understand how capital markets respond to corporate disclosures. This study explores the short- and the long- term market effects of corporate disclosures in a continuous disclosure environment. This study aims to find the answers to the following research questions. (1) How market (price/volume) sensitive is the information contained in each disclosure category in a continuous disclosure environment? (2) How quickly is the value-relevant information incorporated into share prices before the annual earnings announcement is released, and how can company announcements promote this timeliness of price discovery? Specifically, this study examines the extent to which the Australian share market reacts to new public information immediately after the information is released, and the impacts of announcement frequency as to different continuous disclosure categories on the timeliness of price discovery (also known as the speed of price discovery). Prior research has mostly concentrated on a single type of information event to examine the information’s market consequences by monthly, weekly or daily data. Instead, by covering all public announcements and using tick (transaction) data to calculate intraday abnormal returns and abnormal trading volumes, this study examines which type of announcement has the largest immediate market responses, and compares the magnitude (with positive/negative signs) of market reactions to different announcement categories on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX). This study is more attractive under the Australian Continuous Disclosure Regime (CDR) because of the classification system regarding the market-sensitive announcements. Whether or not an announcement is market-sensitive is predetermined by ASX ‘specialist staff’ before the announcement is released on the market. This study investigates how the market interprets the announcement, examining market sensitivity from both the share price and trading volume movements after the announcement is available to the market. In other words, to some extent, the ‘market sensitivity tag’ shows the announcement that the market should react to, and this study reveals the announcement that the market does react to. Focusing on market-sensitive announcements, except for the ASX Query, the significant results show a positive association between announcement categories and intraday Cumulative Abnormal Returns (CARs). Share prices react the most to Progress Reports and to Asset Acquisition & Disposal, and the least to Periodic Reports and Issued Capital. Share price reactions to Distribution Announcements and Other are in the middle. There are at least two possible reasons for the different market reaction magnitudes. One is the information materiality nature: if one type of information is more important to investors than other information, this may cause higher abnormal returns on the market. The other is the information predictability: if there has been a lot of relevant information available in previous days or months, share prices could adjust to the information more smoothly. In terms of the trading volume reactions, intraday Abnormal Trading Volumes (ATVs) are observed after the release of Progress Reports, Asset Acquisition & Disposal, Issued Capital and Periodic Reports. After separating good and bad news subsamples, the results show that Progress Reports and Asset Acquisition & Disposal tend to indicate good signs to the market and cause larger trading volumes. Periodic Reports and Issued Capital could contain either good or bad news, but the trading volumes are driven by bad news. The results also reveal that company size is an important factor. Large companies tend to have relatively small market responses after information is released, which confirms that the larger companies are more stable. This study also evaluates long-term market effects of corporate disclosures by examining the timeliness of price discovery (also known as the speed of price discovery). It is the timeliness with which the full value relevant information is priced over a year before the annual earnings announcement is released. Previous literature has revealed that earnings announcements convey information, because significant stock returns or increased trading volumes are observed around the time that earnings announcements are released. However, it has also been suggested that there are other more timely information sources available that contain essentially similar or even the same value-relevant information. By the time preliminary final reports become available to the market, any potential value-relevant information has been included in the share price. The CDR again provides an attractive environment to examine the impact of corporate disclosures on the timeliness of price discovery, because listed companies have to disclose to the market before any other media sources. This enables an exploration of the relationship between the timeliness and the frequency of continuous disclosures. If the CDR is efficient in keeping investors fully informed, there should be no stock price surprise after the earnings announcement is released. Given the importance of the Preliminary Final Reports to the timeliness metric and the fact that the immediate market reaction tests only cover announcements released during trading hours, this study investigates in depth the Preliminary Final Reports and finds some evidence that companies tend to release bad news after the market closes and/or on Fridays. In terms of the impacts of announcement frequency on the timeliness of price discovery, following the step ‘All announcements – Periodic/Non-periodic announcements – Detailed categories of Non-periodic announcements’, the findings reveal that only earnings-related and cash flow announcements (Periodic Reports, Distribution Announcements and Quarterly Cash Flow Reports) can accelerate the timeliness of price discovery. Unfortunately, the results do not confirm that more announcements on the market could promote the timeliness with which the value-relevant (i.e. earning/income) information is incorporated into share prices. In addition to announcement frequency influences, the price discovery process is faster for companies with better share performance, are larger or have greater profitability. Financial companies have a timelier price discovery process than other companies; the price discovery process of financial companies was affected more by the 2008 – 2010 Global Financial Crisis than that of other companies. This study contributes to the market reaction literature by covering all categories of company announcements and comparing immediate market consequences for each type of announcement, and builds upon the timeliness of the price discovery literature by linking the announcement frequency of each continuous disclosure category to the timeliness with which annual earnings information is incorporated into share prices.</p>

Purpose – This study aims to explore how Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) listed companies manage their statutory continuous disclosure (CD) obligations. Design/methodology/approach – Employing aspects of Gibbins et al.'s corporate financial disclosure framework, this study conducts semi-structured interviews with 22 experienced senior managers from diverse companies to examine in depth the key antecedents, structures and issues influencing the CD process. Findings – The findings indicate that companies' preference to deal with CD as a commercial or legal issue, managers' practical CD experience, who assumes responsibility for CD, owners' and market expectations, third parties, environmental uncertainties and media are important antecedents in the CD process. The importance of these is contingent on company characteristics. Large companies primarily use structured processes and responsive communication networks whereas small to medium companies rely on informal processes and interpersonal communicatio...

Estimation of transaction costs in a stock market is an important issue for stock trading, asset pricing, stock market regulation and so on, and it is often done by combining the bid-ask spread estimate with commissions and other fees provided by market participants, which can be subjective. This study aims to offer an innovative alternative method to estimate the transaction costs in stock trading via the implied transaction costs by using the Leland option pricing model. The effectiveness of this new approach is tested by using the S&P/ASX 200 index call options data. On the basis of the actual transaction costs estimates on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) documented by previous studies and Roll's model, the empirical results reveal that this new approach can provide a reliable transaction costs estimate on stock trading on the ASX. Furthermore, the accuracy of the implied transaction costs across option moneyness and maturity and the variation of the implied transaction costs during the recent global financial crisis period are investigated.

This study explores the effect of corporate ownership structure on firm performance resulting from a firm’s strategic decision of corporate name change. First, the study uses the separation of ownership and control to capture the corporate ownership structure using a new shareholder distribution metric. Second, the study empirically estimates the main and interaction effects of shareholder distribution on a firm’s performance resulting from its corporate name change using data from the Australian Securities Exchange from 2017 to 2022, during which 457 unique firms changed their corporate names. The study finds shareholding distribution has contrasting effects on firm performance due to the corporate name change. The positive impact of shareholder distribution on a firm’s abnormal returns is attenuated due to the corporate name change. Thus, while a manager-controlled firm, characterized by its larger shareholder distribution, reaps more benefits, such benefits are reduced when it makes strategic decisions, such as corporate name change. The study attributes such reduction in firm benefit to owner-manager conflict emanating from a firm’s dispersed corporate ownership structure.

This study examines the impact of company responses to trading‐induced queries made by the Australian Securities Exchange over the period January 2007–December 2008, inclusive. We utilise event study methodology and a matched sample approach to assess the impact of trading query announcements. We use multivariate analysis to investigate any cross‐sectional determinants affecting abnormal returns and volume, and find significant positive shareholder wealth and volume effects associated with query announcements. Further, the unexplained abnormal returns observed prior to the announcement of the trading query persist post‐announcement. Subsequent analysis reveals the industry effect reported in the literature loses significance after accounting for sample selection bias.

Persistent performance and interaction effects in sequential cross-border mergers and acquisitions

The intraday impact of company responses to exchange queries

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate how investors perceive and respond to a firm's R&D announcement. We propose that board structure and intra-industry competition jointly dictate the announcement return. In addition, we assume that investors prefer carefully scrutinized R&D investments to mitigate asymmetric-information risks. Finally, we assume that investors prefer a sustainable R&D investment to prevent intense intra-industry competition and to ensure profit potential. We use a sample of 229 announcements made by 116 Taiwanese listed firms to verify our postulation. Our postulation is the abnormal returns are positively correlated with board independence while negatively correlated with board size. We construct two variables to capture intra-industry competition: (i) the number of days that have elapsed since a competitor's prior announcement and (ii) the ordinal number of announcements in the same industry. Our results show that the announcement effect is negatively correlated with industry R&D intensity. The negative effect is partially ameliorated when the lapse since a prior competitor's announcement is long. Moreover, the announcement effect is also lower when the announcing firm has a high-level of R&D intensity and has experienced numerous prior R&D announcements in the same industry.

Corporate Governance Changes Following Reputational Damage in the Financial Industry

This study develops a structural equation model linking both abnormal stock returns and abnormal trading volume to unexpected changes in accounting ratios that result from the issuance of annual accounting data. The three contributions of this study are as follows: (a) a simultaneous investigation of both the price and the trading activity stock market reactions to the issuance of annual financial statements; (b) the application of a measurement model to depict the changes in a firm's financial characteristics, which result from the issuance of financial statements; and (c) a causal model structure is developed, estimated, and tested. Through overidentification of the model, the hypothesized model structure is evaluated. Instead of investigating the price and trading activity reactions separately, as was done in previous studies, the two reactions are modeled simultaneously and are linked. A measurement model is hypothesized to aggregate the unexpected changes in 13 financial ratios into the unexpected changes in 4 latent financial dimensions: liquidity, leverage, profitability, and activity. The structural model then links the unexpected changes in the financial dimensions to abnormal stock market returns and trading volume. The 13 equations of the measurement model and the 2 structural equations are estimated simultaneously using LISREL, a full information maximum likelihood estimation procedure. The model is estimated, and the hypothesized model configuration recreates 82% of the generalized variance in the observed data. The individual parameter estimates show that the major source of variation in abnormal returns is the unexpected changes in profitability. None of the unexpected changes in the financial dimensions are found to be significantly linked directly to abnormal trading volume. Instead, the link is indirect through the relationship between abnormal returns and abnormal volume.

This study aims to examine whether information asymmetry hypothesis can properly explain announcement effects of seasoned equity issues in China. We use the market adjusted model to measure announcement effects in event studies and use six variables (SIZE, AGE, VOL, B/M, VAR, and EARN) as proxies for information asymmetry in multiple regression analyses. The results show that cumulative abnormal returns around the announcement day are significantly positive for private placements but insignificant for public offerings. The results also show that the coefficients of all variables as proxies for information asymmetry are insignificant in regression analyses. The evidence indicates that information asymmetry hypothesis cannot properly explain the announcement effects of new equity issues in China.

The literature suggests that cash dividend announcements typically have a positive effect on stock prices. However, there has been insufficient exploration into the price effect of dividend announcements specifically within the banking sector. Hence, this study investigates the price effect of dividend announcements among banks listed on the Istanbul Stock Exchange. Dividend announcements spanning from 2008 to 2022 were analyzed using the event study method. Abnormal returns of stocks during the three-day window surrounding the dividend announcements were employed as the dependent variable, while dividend change and dividend yield served as independent variables. The analysis revealed no significant relationship between abnormal returns and dividend change/dividend yield variables. These findings remained consistent across both small and large-cap banks, indicating that dividend announcements do not affect stock prices. This observation is attributed to the likelihood of a low level of asymmetric information between investors and managers, stemming from heightened auditing standards and transparency within the banking sector.

This thesis examines the effect of rights issue announcements on stock prices by companies listed on the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange (KLSE) between 1987 to 1996. The emphasis is to report whether the KLSE is semi strongly efficient with respect to the announcement of rights issues and to check whether the implications of corporate finance theories on the effect of an event can be supported in the context of an emerging market. Once the effect is established, potential determinants of abnormal returns identified by previous empirical work and corporate financial theory are analysed. By examining 70 companies making clean rights issue announcements, this thesis will hopefully shed light on some important issues in long term corporate financing. Event study analysis is used to check on the efficiency of the Malaysian stock market; while cross-sectional regression analysis is executed to identify possible explanators of the rights issue announcements' effect. To ensure the results presented are not contaminated, econometric and statistical issues raised in both analyses have been taken into account. Given the small amount of empirical research conducted in this part of the world, the results of this study will hopefully be of use to investors, security analysts, corporate financial managements, regulators and policy makers as well as those who are interested in capital market based research of an emerging market. It is found that the Malaysian stock market is not semi strongly efficient since there exists a persistent non-zero abnormal return. This finding is not consistent with the hypothesis that security returns adjust rapidly to reflect new information. It may be possible that the result is influenced by the sample, consisting mainly of below average size companies which tend to be thinly traded. Nevertheless, these issues have been addressed. Another important issue which has emerged from the study is that there is some evidence to suggest that insider trading activity existed in this market. In addition to these findings, when the rights issue announcements' effect is compared to the implications of corporate finance theories in predicting the sign of abnormal returns, the signalling model, asymmetric information model, perfect substitution hypothesis and Scholes' information hypothesis cannot be supported.