Using Chinese publicly listed firms from 2007 to 2020, this study empirically explores the impact of non-controlling shareholders’ network on the corporate excess goodwill. We find that the centrality of non-controlling shareholders’ network significantly decreases the excess goodwill from mergers and acquisitions, indicating that non-controlling shareholders’ network can restrain the goodwill bubbles. Moreover, the inhibitory effect of non-controlling shareholders’ network on excess goodwill stems from pressure-resistant institutional investors and individual investors. This effect is achieved through the information effect, resource effect, and governance effect. Furthermore, this inhibitory effect is more pronounced in firms located in less developed regions and legal environments, and firms with lower audit quality. In conclusion, non-controlling shareholders’ network plays a positive role in the restriction of excess goodwill in listed companies.

This study investigates the impact of non-controlling shareholders' network on corporate excess goodwill using Chinese publicly listed companies from 2007 to 2020. We find that a stronger centrality of non-controlling shareholders' network leads to a significant decrease in excess goodwill resulting from mergers and acquisitions. This implies that the non-controlling shareholders’ network has a significant inhibitory effect on the occurrence of goodwill bubbles. Mechanism analysis finds that non-controlling shareholders' network can inhibit excess goodwill thorough information effect, resource effect, and governance effect. Furthermore, this inhibitory effect is attributed to pressure-resistant institutional investors and individual investors, and is more pronounced in firms located in less developed intermediary market and legal system environment, as well as firms with lower audit quality. In summary, the non-controlling shareholders' network plays a positive role in curbing excess goodwill in listed companies.

This study investigates the impact of independent directors' participation in the shareholders meeting on corporate governance, and finds that the more frequently the independent directors attend shareholder meetings, the lower the degree of earnings management by the enterprise; the mechanism test shows that more information increases the probability, frequency, and severity of independent directors’ subsequent dissenting opinions; This study identified a new channel for independent directors to independently obtain true information and this is of great significance for regulators, shareholders, company board, and other stakeholders with an interest in how the information influence independent directors governance effects.

This paper surveys how and why the share spilt reform enhance the corporate governance using agency cost as proxy from the perspective of stockholders’ conflict and liquidity increase in the process of share spilt reform respectively. We find that share spilt reform brings significant governance improvement. Besides, we use some governance effect and liquidity theory proposed by Edmans et al. (2011) to testify by which means the share split reform enhance the corporate governance. What is more, we find that the corporations with great difficulty, which represented for severe shareholders’ conflict, in carrying forward the reform tend to have severe governance problems while it was this kind of corporation that benefited most from the reform and formed the main driving force of the realization of the goal of reform. It has some implication on China’s current reform; that is, only when toughest problems have been overcome will the goal of reform be achieved.

Based on the brief analysis of the theory, we analyze the governance effect of the dynamic allocation of control rights and contingent transfer mechanism through an experiment and show that the dynamic allocation of control rights and contingent transfer mechanism are benefit for limiting the manager’s private benefits and protecting the investors’ return. While, the more the control transfers, the less effort the manager spends in private benefits and the more in the firm’s value. We also show that given more perfect external information revealed and monitoring mechanism, the governance effect of the dynamic allocation of control rights and contingent transfer mechanism will be improved more notable.