We examine the effect of board members with venture capital experience (i.e., VC directors) on executive incentives at publicly listed firms. VC directors serving on the compensation committee are associated with greater CEO risk-taking incentives (i.e., vega) and greater pay-for-performance sensitivity (i.e., delta). These effects are more substantial if VC directors are from highly reputable VC firms. Using Regulation S-K requirements to disclose attributes of nominated directors as an instrument, we show that these results are causal. We also document that prior finding of greater research intensity and innovation when VC directors serve on boards of public firms are in part explained by the presence of increased risk-taking incentives of the CEO instilled by such directors. Lastly, we find that having VC directors on nominating and/or governance committees is associated with a higher likelihood of forced CEO turnover.

In this article, we analyse investment preferences of domestic and foreign institutional investors to the management quality of Chinese listed firms. We find that foreign institutional investors hold higher shareholding in firms with greater numbers of executive officers with MBA degrees, having served as vice president or higher prior to joining the firm and sitting on multiple boards. Foreign institutional investors in China also show preference over investee firms with larger board size. However, they pay no attention to whether directors are independent from the firm management and meet often. Domestic institutional investors show preference to all management quality indicators that are associated with foreign institutional ownership. In addition, domestic institutional investors invest more in firms where the executive officers are certified public accountants (CPA) and are longer tenured in their current position. Furthermore, domestic institutional investors pay more attention to corporate governance of investee firms than foreign institutional investors. Finally, we find that domestic institutional investors show a strong preference to firms that have been invested by at least one Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII), even after controlling for QFII’s preference for management quality. This indicates that the QFIIs’ international reputation has been used by domestic institutional investors as a positive signal for investment opportunities.

Using a sample of China’s listed private firms we investigate the relationship between control-ownership wedge, bank connections and collateral requirement. We find that while control-ownership wedge relates to more pledged collateral, it is mainly the firm’s bank connections rather than its political connections that reduce the collateral requirement and weakens the positive relationship between the control-ownership wedge and collateral. We furhter find that the split-share structure reform and regions with high lender competition also require less collateral and weaken the positive relationship between the control-ownership wedge and collateral. We argue that in an emerging market where legal protection for creditors and investors are weak and relationship is prevalent, bank connections is a substitute for collateral through mitigating the information asymmetry and agency concerns by creditors, which has been further exacerbated due to the tunnelling risk by the controlling shareholders.

We examine how regulators tackle two types of widespread tunneling activities in China. Controlling shareholders and related parties can divert assets from listed firms or coerce firms to serve as guarantors on questionable loans. The government announced and enacted two new rules during the same period: the first rule prohibits asset diversion from listed firms for ‘non-operational’ purposes by large shareholders, while the second standardizes the practice of listed firms providing loan guarantees. Relative to firms not affected by either rule, firms complying with the first rule experience a reduction in the ownership stakes of controlling shareholders, an increase in investment, and significantly better performance. The second rule has no impact on firms. Our results highlight the importance of enforceability: laws and regulations that can be enforced at lower costs are much more likely to succeed, especially in countries with weak institutions.

We examine the impact of corporate ownership structure on the value of excess cash in Chinese listed firms. We find that the value of excess cash is less in firms controlled by private investors than in those firms controlled by the government. One dollar of excess cash is valued a $0.36 in firms controlled by private investors while it rises to $0.42 in firms controlled by the government. Furthermore, we show that the expropriation of the controlling shareholders is significantly and positively related with the previous year’s excess cash in firms controlled by private investors while it is insignificant in firms controlled by the government. These findings are consistent with the view that private controlling shareholders have the greater ability to extract private benefit in cash holdings.

We examine the dynamic adjustment of cash holdings of publicly traded Chinese firms over the period 1998-2006. The empirical evidences are supportive of the dynamic trade-off theory of cash holdings. Importantly, there is strong evidence to support asymmetric adjustments. That is, the adjustments from above the target are significantly faster than adjustments from below. In addition, adjustment speeds are heterogeneous for firms facing differential adjustment costs. In particular, adjustment speed is negatively related to firm size, but positively related to the deviation from the target. Furthermore, in terms of adjustment method, Chinese listed firms make adjustments to their targets primarily through internal financing, while debt financing and dividend payment play a minimal role. Finally, we find that the precautionary motive arising from financial constraints explains the cash holdings adjustment behaviors of Chinese Listed firms well.

Multiunit structure can internalize the managerial market to promote competition among subsidiary managers, and create an internal capital market within firms to alleviate external financing constrains, and it also may lead to diversification to lower the operation risk and regulation. While it brings in more agency problem created by subsidiary managers, causing the efficiency of internal capital market and diversification confusing. Using the data of listed firms in China, an emerging market, this paper examines the efficiency of multiunit structure within the firm, investigating the influence on capital allocation and firm performance. We find that multiunit structure is better in emerging market since it is efficient in capital allocation, reducing the inefficient investment by reducing the overinvestment and alleviating the underinvestment, and the bright side of multiunit structure dominates the agency problem associated, thus beneficial for firm performance, both short-term and long-term accounting returns. In less developed capital market under current situation, multiunit structure is better.

Various studies have been done on wealth effects and financial performance of firms in different countries but have yielded mixed results. Data on completed deals of Cross-border Mergers and Acquisitions (CBMAs) comprising public listed firms with more than ten percent of share acquisition in five East Asian countries were analysed using event study and key financial ratios. Although the results for average abnormal returns in Indonesia and Korea were inconclusive, the results for Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines suggest that the market had reacted positively adding value to the target firms at merger announcements. There was a significant improvement in targets’ free cash flow after CBMAs when compared to both before CBMAs and also control firms after CBMAs. The results also reveal that that these five East Asian countries have moved towards more efficient markets.

We empirically examine the role of venture capital in VC-backed listed firms in Mainland China using the data of SME Board of ShenZhen Stock Exchange from June 2004 to June 2007. Contrary to the evidence from the US, we find that the VC-backed firms in Mainland China experience higher underpricing, which is not owing to the lower pricing in the primary market but the investors in the second market are too optimistic about the prospect of the VC-backed firms. In addition, the pre- and post-IPO operating performance of VC-backed firms is significantly better than that of nonVC-backed ones. Our finding supports the monitoring hypothesis that the VC-backed firms perform better than nonVC-backed firms before and after IPO for the monitoring of VC funds. Moreover, it is found that high-reputation VC-backed firms have a better post-IPO operating and market performance compared to low-reputation VC-backed ones, which is consistent with the grandstanding hypothesis proposed by Gompers (1996). However, there is no evidence to support the certification hypothesis proposed by Megginson and Weiss (1990) that VC-backed firms have a lower underpricing in the IPO performance.

This paper investigates the impact of ownership and ownership concentration on the performance of China’s listed firms. By recognizing the differences between ownership and ownership concentration and between total ownership concentration and tradable ownership concentration, we conduct simplex, interactive and joint analyses. We find that ownership concentration is approximately associated with higher firm performance. Ownership concentration is more powerful than any category of ownership in determining firm performance. Firm performance is better when the state is the largest of the top shareholders and/or institutions dominate ownership among the top tradable shareholders. Our results support the theory that high ownership concentration mitigates the agency problem.