Knowledge that Transforms

Securities class actions typically involve some misrepresentation by a firm that overstates its true value. In securities class actions econometric models are used to assess damages to shareholders. However, studies on measuring damages for debt-holders are limited. Using structural models and leveraging the relationship between equity and firm value, we use observable equity information to determine firm and debt values and hence the effect of misrepresentation on corporate debt values. We find that the misrepresentation impact on debt value depends on the debt's credit risk. Generally, the debt for higher-leverage firms is more sensitive to the misrepresentation impact than for lower-leverage firms and junior debt is more affected by fraud than senior debt. Our proposed methodology allows for debt damages assessments consistent with standard methods for assessing equity damages. Our findings have important consequences for damages assessment and the allocation of settlement awards in securities class actions. In some jurisdictions damages awarded are net of any hedge or risk-limitation transaction. Since corporate securities such as bonds and stocks are often held in portfolios for hedging purposes, measuring the effect of misrepresentation on all of the firm's issuances is essential to accurately computed damages awards. Additionally our approach provides a consistent methodology for computing damages for securities that do not trade on public markets. A case study of a recent securities class action illustrates our methodology.

We analyze the importance of personal attributes in explaining the performance of reported share transactions by corporate insiders. While prior literature has focused on observable firm and trade characteristics, little effort has been made to understand how individual attributes, such as skills, abilities, or personality, impact upon post-trade abnormal returns. We document that personal attributes explain up to a third of the variability in insider trading performance and dominate unobservable and observable firm and trade characteristics by a sizeable margin. Personal attributes are correlated with the insider's year of birth, education and gender, and matter more in companies with greater information asymmetry and when outsiders are inattentive to public information. We shed also new light on the significance of executive hierarchy and regulations in explaining insider trading performance and highlight the importance of controlling for individual fixed effects in insider trading research to avoid omitted variable bias in estimated regression coefficients.

We examine the role of social ties in IPO underwriting syndicate formation and find that an investment bank is more likely to be included in the underwriting syndicate when it is connected to the IPO firm through interpersonal social ties between the respective executives and directors. These social ties generate better outcomes, consistent with a quid pro quo arrangement between the respective parties. The investment bank benefits by receiving higher compensation, a more senior role in the IPO, and greater share allocations. For the IPO firm, the presence of social ties between the IPO issuer and the chosen underwriters is associated with net wealth gains for its pre-IPO shareholders.

We analyze the role of political instability for the composition of foreign investment, whether it takes the form of a majority- or minority-owned investment. We focus on the instability generated by the change of the party in power rather than on the risk of change of political regime or expropriation risk associated with this change. In majority-owned establishments, a foreign investor retains the control and enjoys fewer agency problems, while for minority-owned investments or joint ventures domestic partners of a foreign investor can lobby the government for preferential arrangements, such as firm-specific tax breaks. Political instability decreases the payoff of political connections in the future and decreases the attractiveness of minority-owned investments. The implications of our model are supported by empirical tests.

We explore how and when venture capital (VC) alleviates the financial constraints of portfolio companies. Using a sample comprising 128 VC-backed companies and 233 non-VC-backed companies identified by propensity score matching, we estimate an error-correction model by accounting for the fact that the investment curve may be U shaped because of capital market imperfections. Our findings show that VC leads the investment curve to flatten in portfolio companies, which indicates an alleviation of financial constraints. This effect, however, is economically and statistically significant only after companies receive a follow-on round of VC financing. Because follow-on rounds, on average, do not involve larger amounts invested but have stronger informative content than initial rounds of investment, we interpret this result to indicate the importance of VC certification for the alleviation of financial constraints in portfolio companies. Evidence regarding the access to credit by VC-backed companies confirms this interpretation of the results.

This paper investigates VC investment stage drifts as explained by the outcomes of managerial incentive schemes under different financial market conditions and past return performances. We exploit a unique dataset containing data for all of the venture capital funds in Europe that received financial support from the European Investment Fund (EIF) during the years 1998–2007. The dataset includes 149 VC funds that invested in 1925 companies. We find that a higher hurdle rate produces a compensation incentive that discourages VC managers from lowering funds' risk. We also observe that more reputable fund managers are less likely to increase risk by downward stage drifting and more likely to play it safe by following upward stage drifting strategies. Finally, managers of funds with a poor past performance appear to be less keen to perform stage drifts towards less risky stages, relative to well-performing fund managers. The latter evidence is more significant in periods of bull financial markets.

We examine the impact of information asymmetry on a firm's capital structure decisions with a unique information rating scheme that draws from 114 measures over five dimensions of information disclosures on each firm from 2006 to 2012. We find that a firm with high (low) information rating is related to low (high) debt financing and leverage. In particular, a firm that moves from the lowest to the highest information rating experiences a 7.8% reduction in firm leverage on average. This relationship is robust to firm characteristics, incentive conflicts, and the agreement theory of Dittmar and Thakor (2007). Our results suggest that information asymmetry is influential on a firm's pecking order behavior independent of these effects.

We examine the role of institutional investors' investment horizon on the information content associated with dividend announcement surprises in the “dividend-reappearance era”. We find that the presence of institutional investors negatively affects the announcement period cumulative abnormal return (CAR), which suggests that institutional investors reduce information content of dividend announcements. This result is primarily driven by the fact that institutional investors, especially the not-short-horizon investors, do not prefer dividend surprises – which leads to lower announcement period CAR. We do not find support for institutional investors' informed trading argument. Our study reveals that in order to understand the dynamics between institutional ownership and information content of dividend announcements, it is important to differentiate the institutional investors' investment horizons.