This paper reassesses two conflicting hypotheses on the valuation impacts of private placements of equity (PPEs), the monitoring/certification hypothesis and the managerial entrenchment hypothesis, by focusing on the shareholder approval, active buyer, and premium pricing features of PPEs. We find that PPEs with these features have significant positive announcement returns and insignificant mean long-run returns, while the corresponding announcement and long-run returns for PPEs without such features are significantly negative. Firms with value-enhancing PPE features are better governed and use proceeds more efficiently. Thus, the heterogeneous nature of PPEs helps reconcile the puzzling return patterns and conflicting hypotheses regarding PPEs.

This paper studies the shareholder wealth effects associated with 875 new security issues in Japan from January 1, 1985 to May 31, 1991. The sample includes public equity, private equity, rights offerings, straight debt, warrant debt and convertible debt issues. Contrary to the U.S., the announcement of convertible debt issues is accompanied by a significant positive abnormal return of 1.05%. The announcement of equity issues has a positive abnormal return ofO.45%, significant at the 0.10 level, but this positive abnormal return can be attributed to one year in our sample and is offset by a negative issue date abnormal return of -1.01%. The abnormal returns are negatively related to firm size, so that for equity issues (but not for convertible debt issues), large Japanese firms have significant negative announcement abnormal returns. Our evidence is consistent with the view that Japanese managers decide to issue shares based on different considerations than American managers.

Using block share acquisitions made by private equity (PE) funds, we examine the sources of value gains in PE minority equity investments. We find that compared with non-PE acquirers, PE acquirers are more likely to place representatives with finance experience or those with experience in the target's industry on the target's board when the need for target oversight and/or advice is higher. The targets in PE acquisitions, particularly poorly performing targets, targets with high R&D intensity, and targets with PE-appointed directors who have experience in the target's industry, realize both higher announcement returns and better post-acquisition operating performance than do targets in non-PE acquisitions. These findings suggest that the governance and operational engineering that PE acquirers apply to their targets constitutes important sources of value creation in PE minority equity investments.

We investigate how seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) by issuers with large customers affect both trading partners’ market values and the relationship's health. We hypothesize that SEOs reveal adverse information about an issuer's major customers and find that issuers and their large customers experience negative returns on SEO announcements. These results are more pronounced when customers have higher levels of information asymmetry and when customer-supplier relationships are particularly important. Large customers of issuers experience larger declines in post-SEO sales, operating performance, and credit ratings than large customers of non-issuers. Also, SEO issuer sales to large customers and relationship duration significantly decline.

This paper examines the effects that bank relations have on stock repurchases in Japan. Similar to US evidence, we find that stock repurchase announcements in Japan have positive announcement period returns. Announcement returns are positively related to equity ownership by main banks, but are negatively related to nonbank debt ratios. In contrast, bank debt ratios do not have such a negative relation. Announcement returns are also negatively related to future growth opportunities, suggesting that repurchase announcements are greeted more positively by investors when repurchasing firms have lower growth opportunities. We also find that firms with high leverage are less likely to repurchase stocks, whereas firms with high equity ownership by main banks are more likely to do so. Overall, these results are consistent with the views that banks, particularly main banks, are effective monitors of agency costs and financial distress risk, and that their presence as dual stakeholders are value-enhancing.

We examine two competing views regarding the impact of competition among credit rating agencies on rating quality: the view that rating agencies do not sacrifice their reputation by inflating firm ratings, and the view that competition among rating agencies arising from the conflict of interest inherent in an “issuer pay” model creates pressure to inflate ratings. Using Fitch’s market share as a measure of competition among rating agencies and controlling for the endogeneity problem caused by unobservable industry effects, we find no relation between Fitch’s market share and ratings, suggesting that competition does not lead to rating inflation.

We examine whether institutions’ monitoring effectiveness is related to the number of their blockholdings. We find that the number of blocks that a firm's large institutions hold is positively associated with forced chief executive officer (CEO) turnover-performance sensitivity, abnormal returns around forced CEO turnover announcements and 13D filings, and changes in firm value. These results are particularly evident when institutions have multiple blockholdings in the same industry, when they have activism experience, or when they have long-term blockholdings in their portfolio firms. Our results suggest that information advantages and governance experience obtained from multiple blockholdings are important channels through which institutions perform effective monitoring.

We examine whether equity‐linked private securities offerings are used as a mechanism for tunneling among firms that belong to a Korean chaebol. We find that chaebol issuers involved in intragroup deals set the offering prices to benefit their controlling shareholders. We also find that chaebol issuers (member acquirers) realize an 8.8% (5.8%) higher (lower) announcement return than do other types of issuers (acquirers) if they sell private securities at a premium to other member firms, and if the controlling shareholders receive positive net gains from equity ownership in issuers and acquirers. These results are consistent with tunneling within business groups.

We examine the value impact of independent directors nominated by activists (Activist IDs). Firms appointing Activist IDs experience larger value increases than firms appointing other directors, particularly when Activist IDs have private firm experience and when their nominators remain as shareholders. This value increase persists over a long period and is greater than that of activism events without director appointments. The increase is also higher among firms with greater monitoring needs and entrenched boards. Moreover, the appointments of Activist IDs are greeted more positively by the market, and Activist IDs obtain more favorable shareholder votes and additional future directorships.

Endowment payouts have become an increasingly important component of universities' revenues in recent decades. We study how universities respond to financial shocks to endowments and thus shed light on a number of existing models of endowment behavior. Endowments actively reduce payouts relative to their stated payout policies following negative, but not positive, shocks. This asymmetric behavior is consistent with “endowment hoarding,” especially among endowments whose current value is close to the benchmark value at the start of the university president's tenure. We also document the effect of negative endowment shocks on university operations, such as personnel cuts.