This paper examines the effectiveness of preemptive rights in protecting minority shareholders, drawing on new issuances by Chinese listed firms spanning from 2006 to 2022. The evidence reveals that, on average, only 62% of shareholders exercise their preemptive rights despite an 18% issuance discount, resulting in wealth losses of 6% of issuance amount for non-participating shareholders. More importantly, minority shareholders suffer greater wealth losses because they lack sophistication and face extra constraints in exercising their rights compared to controlling shareholders. These findings call for additional policy safeguards, such as rights transferability and controlling shareholders’ pre-commitment, to enhance minority shareholder protection.

The Chinese market is characterized by state-controlled and closely held firms as well as significant differences in economic development and legal structures at the provincial level and corporate regulations that require firms seeking external financing to show a history of dividend payment. Using a sample of listed Chinese firms, we investigate the firm’s choice of cash or stock dividends and market reactions to the announcement of these dividend choices. We find that profitable, low leverage, high cash holding, stronger shareholder protection firms, and those firms with state ownership prior to listing and undertaking subsequent equity offerings are more likely to pay dividends and cash dividends, in particular. In addition, we find that growing firms with high levels of retained earnings and investing more in fixed assets pay stock dividends. Firms appear to cater to investor demands in setting dividend policy; hence firms with a large proportion of non-tradable shares are more likely to pay cash dividends. Consistent with the use of stock dividends to attract the attention of analysts, we find that the announcement of a stock dividend initiation is associated with significant positive market reactions and increased analyst following.

The Chinese market is characterized by state-controlled and closely held firms as well as significant differences in economic development and legal structures at the provincial level and corporate regulations that require firms seeking external financing to show a history of dividend payment. Using a sample of listed Chinese firms, we investigate the likelihood of paying dividends, different forms of dividends and market reactions to various dividend announcements. We find that profitable, low leverage, high cash holding, stronger shareholder protection firms, and those firms with state ownership prior to listing and undertaking subsequent equity offerings are more likely to pay dividends and cash dividends, in particular. Firms appear to cater to investor demands in setting dividend policy; hence firms with a large proportion of non-tradable shares are more likely to pay cash dividends. Consistent with the use of stock dividends to attract the attention of analysts, we also find that growing firms with high levels of retained earnings and greater investment in fixed assets pay stock dividends and these firms’ dividend announcements are associated with significant positive market reactions and increased analyst following.

In this paper, on the premise that the expropriation of corporate assets by controlling shareholders would generate a residual loss, we studied how the laws of investor protection influenced on the decentralization of corporate ownership, the penalty and the cost of litigation. There are several interested conclusions we reached. At first, the effective protection of minority shareholders will lead to the decentralization of ownership, which is irrelevant to whether there is litigation cost or who should pay the cost. Second, if litigation costs remain unchanged, effective minority shareholder protection laws will evolve along a self-reinforcing path. On the other hand, if the penalty remains unchanged, effective minority shareholder protection laws will cause litigation costs to increase over time. These conclusions are irrelevant to who pays the litigation cost. Last, pay the cost by minority shareholders or controlling shareholders will cause litigation costs to increase or decrease with the penalty.

We examine the wealth effects of three regulatory changes designed to improve minority-shareholder protection in the Chinese stock markets. Using the value of a firm's related-party transactions as an inverse proxy for the quality of corporate governance, we find that firms with weaker governance experienced significantly larger abnormal returns around announcements of the new regulations than did firms with stronger governance. This evidence indicates that securities-market regulation can be effective in protecting minority shareholders from expropriation in a country with weak judicial enforcement. We also find that firms with strong ties to the government did not benefit from the new regulations, suggesting that minority shareholders did not expect regulators to enforce the new rules on firms where block holders have strong political connections.

This paper examines both the time series and cross-country patterns in the development of stock markets around the world. It adopts a flexible modeling framework that allows for the breakdown of changes in equity market capitalization into changes in macroeconomic and financial fundamentals, shifts in valuation technology and market sentiment, and improvement in valuation efficiency. Using panel data on 32 countries, I show that for developed countries, the size of their equity markets is positively related to the correlation of these markets with the global portfolio, and is negatively related to government consumption. For developing countries, the level of financial intermediary development and openness to trade are found to be conducive to the development of local equity markets. For given levels of market fundamentals, developed countries with greater economic freedom and stronger shareholder protections are associated with more highly valued equity markets, while the French or German civil law countries and countries with insider trading legislation tend to have relatively poorly valued equity markets. For developing countries, ceteris paribus, high quality of accounting standards is found to be associated with higher valuation of their equity markets. I find that only equities in emerging markets become more highly valued, indicating an improvement in valuation efficiency over time. Australia, Canada, the United States, Hong Kong, and Singapore have the most highly valued equity markets in the developed world, while Malaysia has the mostly highly valued equity market in the developing world. It appears that favorable shifts in valuation technology and market sentiment contribute the lion’s share of the growth of global equity markets.