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.

Why does corporate governance--front page news with the collapse of Enron, WorldCom, and Parmalat--vary so dramatically around the world? This book explains how politics shapes corporate governance--how managers, shareholders, and workers jockey for advantage in setting the rules by which companies are run, and for whom they are run. It combines a clear theoretical model on this political interaction, with statistical evidence from thirty-nine countries of Europe, Asia, Africa, and North and South America and detailed narratives of country cases. This book differs sharply from most treatments by explaining differences in minority shareholder protections and ownership concentration among countries in terms of the interaction of economic preferences and political institutions. It explores in particular the crucial role of pension plans and financial intermediaries in shaping political preferences for different rules of corporate governance. The countries examined sort into two distinct groups: diffuse shareholding by external investors who pick a board that monitors the managers, and concentrated blockholding by insiders who monitor managers directly. Examining the political coalitions that form among or across management, owners, and workers, the authors find that certain coalitions encourage policies that promote diffuse shareholding, while other coalitions yield blockholding-oriented policies. Political institutions influence the probability of one coalition defeating another.

Research Question/Issue: Focusing on an environment where the principal agency conflict steams from the divergence of interests between dominant owners and minority shareholders, and where the legal system provides weak protection to external investors, we analyze the effect of firms' political ties on earnings informativeness. We also address a question that has not been considered in previous research, namely, the impact of the level of divergence between the dominant owner's voting and cash flow rights on earnings informativeness for politically connected firms.Research Findings/Insights: We find that the presence of politicians on the board negatively affects earnings informativeness. We also find a positive impact of the divergence between the dominant owner's voting and cash flow rights on the informativeness of accounting earnings in politically connected firms.Theoretical/Academic Implications: We show that the relationship between political ties and earnings informativeness is explained by an information effect, whereby politicians and shareholders are interested in providing as little information to the market as possible. Additionally, we show that the positive relationship between divergence and earnings informativeness in politically connected firms is explained by an alignment effect, whereby the existence of political ties reduces the dominant owner's incentive to expropriate minority shareholders' wealth, thus increasing earnings informativeness.Practitioner/Policy Implications: The results of our study may be useful for regulators interested in increasing transparency in order to promote a more efficient allocation of resources. Similarly, the results may be useful to investors, financial analysts and auditors, as they provide evidence of the importance of considering specific features of the corporate governance system when assessing the credibility of accounting information.

In a painstaking analysis, Roe (law, Harvard Law School) examines the impact of a nation's strong social policies on the corporate governance, suggesting that stronger social policies can cause an American style of diffuse ownership among shareholders to fail. The link between social policies and corporate governance is examined statistically for a large number of countries, and in case studies for seven: Italy, Germany, Sweden, the UK, France, Japan, and the US. Product markets, securities markets, and the ability of corporate and economic structures to induce a political backlash are discussed. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

Through the use of statistical and qualitative analyses, this text explores the relationship between politics, history and the business organization from a global perspective. The book is divided into seven sections: "Political Conflict and the Corporation"; "Social Conflict and the Institutions of Corporate Governance"; "Left-Right Politics and Ownership Separation: Data"; "Nation by Nation"; "The Direction of Causality"; "The Quality of Corporate Law Argument and its Limits"; and "Unifying the Political Theories".

Concentrated ownership is considered to be the best protection for shareholders in economies where legal protection is relatively weak. This book investigates and concludes, for Indian business groups, that concentrated-inside ownership provides opportunities for the expropriation of minority shareholders. While more concentrated direct ownership of controlling families results in a higher market value of equity, indirect ownership obtained through cross-holding provides incentives to extract private benefits and results in value loss. This finding requires the prompt attention of regulatory bodies, outside investors and other interested parties. This book examines the effect of ownership structure and disclosure of related-party transactions on firm valuation of group-affiliated firms in India, by using a sample of 317 listed firms comprising 1350 firm-year observations from 2008 to 2017. Well-accepted value-relevance models are employed to examine the effect of ownership rights on market value of equity and valuation effect of RP trading, asset transfer, investment and loan transactions.

Corporate law and governance are at the forefront of regulatory activities worldwide, and subject to increasing public attention in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis. Comprehensively referencing the key debates, the Handbook provides a much-needed framework for understanding the aims and methods of legal research in the field.

Written in a readable style, this book provides an account, and much-needed analysis, of minority shareholders rights and remedies under section 459 of the Companies Act 1985. In the study of minority shareholders rights, there has been a tendency to give inadequate attention to the remedies now available. This book take a new approach to the treatment of minority shareholders protection. Much of this book is devoted to a detailed study of the effectiveness of section 459 as a shareholders remedy. Commencing with an examination of the problems faced by a minority shareholder, the book goes on t.

For many Americans, capitalism is a dynamic engine of prosperity that rewards the bold, the daring, and the hardworking. But to many outside the United States, capitalism seems like an initiative that serves only to concentrate power and wealth in the hands of a few hereditary oligarchies. As A History of Corporate Governance around the World shows, neither conception is wrong. In this volume, some of the brightest minds in the field of economics present new empirical research that suggests that each side of the debate has something to offer the other. Free enterprise and well-developed financial systems are proven to produce growth in those countries that have them. But research also suggests that in some other capitalist countries, arrangements truly do concentrate corporate ownership in the hands of a few wealthy families. A History of Corporate Governance around the World provides historical studies of the patterns of corporate governance in several countries-including the large industrial economies of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States; larger developing economies like China and India; and alternative models like those of the Netherlands and Sweden.

The role of Corporate Social Responsibility in the business world has developed from a fig leaf marketing front into an important aspect of corporate behavior over the past several years. Sustainable strategies are valued, desired and deployed more and more by relevant players in many industries all over the world. Both research and corporate practice therefore see CSR as a guiding principle for business success. The “Encyclopedia of Corporate Social Responsibility” has been conceived to assist researchers and practitioners to align business and societal objectives. All actors in the field will find reliable and up to date definitions and explanations of the key terms of CSR in this authoritative and comprehensive reference work. Leading experts from the global CSR community have contributed to make the “Encyclopedia of Corporate Social Responsibility” the definitive resource for this field of research and practice.