The Chinese IPO market has introduced the private oversight of sponsors under tight government control. We examine the performance of IPOs that are managed under private sector oversight, known as the sponsorship system. Using buy-and-hold returns, operating performance measures, Fama-French five factor models, propensity score matching, and triple DiD (DDD), we find that long-term performance is better under the sponsorship system. Additionally, we find that IPOs with reputable sponsor institutions and reputable sponsor representatives perform better. Relatedly, the CSRC takes less time to review the admission documents prepared by reputable-sponsor institutions. Regulatory action taken by the CSRC is shown to be effective, as the number of IPO businesses declines for sanctioned sponsor institutions, and the IPOs managed by them perform better once they have received a penalty.

We provide novel evidence of the role of investor sentiment in determining firms' capital structure decisions from three perspectives: leverage ratio, debt maturity and leverage target adjustment. We find that when investor sentiment is high, firms increase their leverage ratios, supporting our contention that high investor sentiment increases firms' debt capacity and facilitates the use of an aggressive leverage policy. Debt maturity is shorter in high sentiment periods, implying that firms are confident about future earnings and use shorter debt maturity to signal their financial solvency. Leverage target adjustment is slower in low sentiment periods, indicating higher costs of external finance. Furthermore, the sentiment-leverage relationship sensitivity is greater for financially constrained firms. Our extended analysis determines that leverage-increasing firms generate lower stock returns subsequent to a period of high sentiment, offering practical insights into the economic consequences of increasing leverage in high sentiment periods on corporate value for investors. Our research advances the understanding of the impact of investor sentiment on firms' financing decisions and stock returns.

This paper investigates the dynamic interactions of firms' financial behaviours using a five-variable structural vector autoregression (SVAR) framework. We provide empirical evidence that firms' financial behaviours are jointly determined. We demonstrate that a single-equation analysis on one financial behaviour generates biased estimates. We find that firms deviate from the desired level of each financial characteristic to absorb shocks to the other financial characteristics. Following such deviations, the characteristics revert in subsequent periods. Among these inter-related financial behaviours, equity decisions are the most independent, followed by dividend target, investment, and leverage target. Although firms prioritize financial behaviours differently, it appears that there is neither one financial behaviour that firms use only to absorb shocks nor one that never responds to the others.

An open market share buyback is not a firm commitment, and there is limited evidence on whether firms repurchase the intended shares. Unlike US studies, we use data from unique UK regulatory and disclosure environment that allows to accurately measure the share buyback completion rates. We show that information disclosure and CEO overconfidence are significant determinants of the share buyback completion rate. In addition, we find that large and widely held firms that conduct subsequent buyback programs and have a past buyback completion reputation exhibit higher completion rates. Finally, we assess whether other CEO characteristics affect buyback completion rates and find that firms with senior CEOs who hold external directorships and have a longer tenure as CEO are more likely to complete the buyback programs. In sum, our results suggest there is a clear relationship between information disclosure, CEO overconfidence, and buyback completion rates.

In this paper, we analyze whether regulation reduced risk during the credit crisis and the sovereign debt crisis for a cross section of global banks. In this regard, we examine distance to default (Laeven and Levine, 2008), systemic risk (Acharya et al., 2010), idiosyncratic risk, and systematic risk. We employ World Bank survey data on regulations to test our conjectures. We find that regulatory restrictions, official supervisory power, capital stringency, along with private monitoring can explain bank risk in both crises. Additionally, we find that deposit insurance schemes enhance moral hazard, as this encouraged banks to take on more risk and perform poorly during the sovereign debt crisis. Finally, official supervision and private monitoring explains the returns during both crisis periods.