The Role of Financial Institutions in the Corporate Governance of Listed Chinese Companies*

This paper explores the role of Chinese financial institutions in the corporate governance of listed companies through interviews with both senior managers of financial institutions and board directors of listed companies. Our results show that, while most securities companies are passive investors, a good proportion of the active mutual funds help their portfolio companies prepare financial forecasts, standardize their operations, raise external funds, strengthen their company image in the capital markets, and sometimes intervene in corporate issues. This limited role can be attributed to a number of factors specific to the Chinese context including highly concentrated state ownership, an immature regulatory environment, inadequate transparency and disclosure of financial information, and weak corporate governance within financial institutions themselves. It could also be affected by several other factors that are considered to cause institutional passivity in developed countries such as conflicts of interest, monitoring costs and lack of expertise.     

When Financial Intermediaries are Corporate Owners: An Agency Model of Institutional Ownership

Increasingly, the equity investments of individual investors are being channeled through financial institutions. This article posits that the role of institutional owners as financial intermediaries, and the resulting complexity that institutions bring to ownership, distinguish institutional ownership from individual ownership. I develop a model of institutional ownership, referred to as the nexus agency model (NAM), which reflects this complexity. The model provides a framework for identifying the potential additional agency costs to beneficial owners that are associated with owning via financial institutions. The degree to which owning via institutions benefits individual owners depends on the adequacy of the legal and regulatory environment and governance mechanisms in protecting individual owners' interests. The applicability of the nexus model to different institutional owner types is then demonstrated in a discussion of U.S. public and private pension plans and mutual funds, leading to the generation of a NAM-based research agenda for each type and across the types. The article ends with discussion of the model's applicability to non-U.S. institutional environments.     

机构投资者持股偏好、筛选策略与企业社会绩效

以中国上市公司为研究对象,采用最小二乘法和两阶段最小二乘法,借助EViews工具,检验中国机构投资者持股与企业社会绩效的关系,以考察机构投资者基于企业社会绩效的持股偏好和筛选策略,选取2005年至2009年沪深两市918家上市公司为样本进行实证检验。研究结果表明,机构投资者表现出对企业社会绩效的持股偏好,在制定持股决策时会考虑企业社会绩效,尤其是近两年的企业社会绩效。进一步对机构投资者进行分类研究表明,各类机构投资者持股与企业社会绩效关系的差异性较大,仅有基金表现出类似的持股偏好。机构投资者整体和基金的持股偏好是源于筛选策略的介入,正面筛选策略比负面筛选策略对持股偏好的影响程度更大,即机构投资者制定投资决策时以正面筛选策略为主要手段,负面筛选策略为辅。     

Financial Reporting,Private Disclosure and the Corporate Governance Role of Financial Institutions

This paper explores how large UK financial institutions (FIs) pursued a private corporate governance agenda with their portfolio companies. It also investigates the role of financial reporting in private and public corporate governance. The case financial institutions argued that the limited quality of public information, especially in financial reports, was a major constraint on their ability to act in fund management and corporate governance roles. However, the financial reporting cycle determined a private institutional and company meeting cycle and this created opportunities for private information collection and for governance influence by FIs. In addition, the perceived limitations of public governance mechanisms such as voting encouraged private governance approaches. As a result, the case financial institutions had the incentive and the means to improve the quality of their sources of corporate information and to obtain a competitive edge over other financial institutions and the market through their direct contact with companies. Despite the limitations of public information, the paper reveals how public disclosure in financial statements and the financial reporting cycle played a central role in corporate governance. Public sources of information were combined with private sources to create a financial institutional knowledge advantage. The institutions used this knowledge to diagnose problem areas in strategy, management quality, and the effectiveness of the board, and their impact on financial performance. The financial reporting cycle meant that the quasi insider financial institution had the access opportunity and the joint public/private insight to influence companies across a wide corporate governance agenda and in a range of corporate circumstances. The case institutions exploited these private access and knowledge advantages for investment purposes and for Cadbury style corporate governance purposes. Thus, the private governance process was critically dependent on the FI knowledge advantage, which in turn relied on both financial reports and private disclosure. This wide ranging governance behaviour by institutions corresponds to recommendations subsequently made by the Hampel report in 1998 concerning UK corporate governance. The paper ends by exploring how the private institutional and company meeting agenda can suggest new directions for financial reporting and public disclosure and how this can further improve public and private corporate governance.     

机构投资者持股与企业应计盈余管理和真实盈余管理行为选择

采用异常操控性项目的计算方法度量企业应计盈余管理和真实盈余管理程度,以2003年至2011年中国上市公司为研究样本,构建多元线性回归模型和联立方程模型,考察机构投资者持股对应计盈余管理和真实盈余管理行为选择的影响。研究结果表明,机构投资者持股比例与真实盈余管理程度显著负相关,与应计盈余管理程度显著正相关;对机构投资者明细类别的检验结果发现这种相关关系在投资基金、证券公司、QFII、保险公司和社保基金这5类机构投资者中均存在,但企业年金、信托公司、财务公司和银行持股对盈余管理行为的影响不显著;按照机构投资者持股规模、股权分置改革和终极控制人性质的分组检验结果表明,这种相关关系在不同的内外部环境中均存在,且相对于国有控股上市公司,非国有控股上市公司中机构投资者抑制真实盈余管理行为的作用更强;机构投资者持股与整体盈余管理程度显著负相关。     

最终控制人性质、两权分离度与机构投资者持股——兼论不同类型机构投资者的差异

上市公司所有权与控制权的严重分离会影响其公司价值,进而会影响投资者的投资决策.本文以2004-2007年我国A股上市公司为研究样本,考察了上市公司两权分离状况对机构投资者总体和各类机构投资者持股决策的影响.研究发现,最终控制人所有权比例越高,两权分离度越小时,机构投资者(主要是证券投资基金)持股比例越高;而且两权分离度指标对机构投资者持股决策的影响在最终控制人为非国有性质的企业中表现更为明显.本文的研究结论表明.我国机构投资者总体上能够做到自我利益保护,在投资者保护方面发挥积极的作用,但是这种作用的发挥在各个类型机构投资者中存在显著差异.     

The tradeoff between mutual fund and direct stock investments: a theoretical analysis involving different types of investors

We study the tradeoff between direct and indirect stock investments through equity mutual funds for a utility-maximizing investor. Whereas direct investments impose higher transaction costs on the formation of a well-diversified portfolio, mutual funds charge fees for their services. Our results show that the fee levels that make private investors indifferent between direct and indirect stock investments vary heavily according to risk aversion, the amounts invested, correlations between assets, transaction costs, and the length of investment horizon. In particular, our results suggest that for a wide range of actively managed mutual funds, the fees charged are too high for these mutual funds to appeal to a wide range of informed investors. However, accounting for search costs, such as costs for financial advice, can facilitate an understanding of the levels of management fees charged by mutual funds existing in the market.     

机构投资者、代理成本与公司价值——基于随机前沿模型及门槛回归的实证分析

本文运用随机前沿模型,从代理成本的视角出发,实证检验了以证券投资基金为代表的机构投资者对公司价值的影响。研究结果表明,机构投资者持股对公司价值具有显著正面影响,但同时也表现出明显的“倒L”型特征。基于这一发现,进一步采用Hansen（1999）提出的面板门槛模型,测算了机构投资者对公司价值的影响发生显著结构性变化时的门槛水平,结果表明,当机构持股比例超过大约12%时,机构投资者对公司价值的提升作用会大幅减弱。同时,本文还发现,开放式基金相较于封闭式基金对公司价值的提升具有更加积极的作用。     

机构投资者持股与上市公司违规行为的实证研究

本文采用部分可观测的Bivariate Probit估计方法,对2001年至2009年中国1729家上市公司进行回归检验,发现机构投资者持股比例降低了公司违规行为倾向,同时增加了公司违规行为被稽查的可能性。该结论在控制了机构投资者变量内生性的因素后仍旧稳健。进一步研究表明,相比公司经营违规,机构投资者对信息披露违规倾向的影响更强。另外,相比证券机构投资者,养老保险基金、社保基金、企业年金持股的公司中违规公司比例更低。除此以外,机构投资者对公司违规的抑制与检举作用并不受其它公司治理变量的影响。本文的研究表明中国机构投资者在预防与打击上市公司违规行为方面发挥了重要的作用,并且也为上市公司与监管部门提供了治理和防范企业违规的线索。     

机构投资者参与公司治理积极性的分析

在对公司治理和资本市场发展的研究中,机构投资者的作用越来越受到重视.本文基于机构投资者与公司治理间的相关性和国内外已有的研究成果,通过数理模型的一般分析阐释了影响机构投资者参与公司治理积极性的四个因素:持有单个公司的股权比率、资本市场中公司治理结构不完善的概率、所投资公司治理结构的完善程度以及监督成本,并得出了有关的研究结论.最后本文,对机构投资者积极参与我国上市公司治理提出了若干政策建议.     

Vocabularies of Motive and Temporal Perspectives: Examples of Pension Fund Engagement and Disengagement

Prior research on institutional investors’ role in corporate governance draws a distinction between engaged and disengaged pension funds. The aim of this study was to shed more light on how pension fund practitioners talk about engagement and disengagement. Using insights from 35 in‐depth, semi‐structured interviews and round‐table discussions with pension fund trustees, executives, investment officers and financial intermediaries, we identify different types of vocabularies and temporal perspectives used to account for different stances towards engagement. We highlight a tension between a seemingly causal relationship between accounts and future behaviour and argue that these ‘accounts’, ‘vocabularies’ and ‘uses of the past’ in themselves need to be treated as an object of study because they may represent not simply the individual motivations but rather the expressions of extant norms in the broader social context of financial markets. An important policy implication is that perceived realities of investment are unlikely to cause a change in pension fund behaviour because participants seem to decouple their view of the world from their impact on the world.     

论机构投资者在公司治理中角色的定位及政策建议

在研究公司治理和资本市场发展时,机构投资者的作用越来越受到重视,随着机构投资者所持有公司股份的不断上升,他们开始积极参与公司治理.但是,不同类型的机构投资者所持有公司的股权比例、监督成本以及风险偏好等存在较大的差异,因而他们在公司治理活动中的表现也将截然不同.正是基于此,本文通过对机构投资者积极参与公司治理进行数理模型的一般分析,分析了机构投资者是否积极参与公司治理的条件机构投资者持有公司的股权比例、监督成本、风险偏好.结论表明,上述三个因素的变动影响着机构投资者是否进行监督及其监督的临界值.本文对机构投资者积极参与我国上市公司治理进行了适用性分析,并提出一些政策性建议.     

机构投资者信息搜寻、公开信息透明度与私有信息套利

本文利用特有的机构投资者私有信息搜寻数据,研究了机构投资者的信息搜寻、透明度与私有信息套利的关系。本文的研究发现,机构投资者的信息搜寻和信息披露的透明度降低了私有信息套利,而且机构投资者信息搜寻、信息披露透明度在私有信息套利严重的公司对降低私有信息套利的作用更加明显。同时,本文的研究结果也表明,机构投资者信息搜寻与信息披露透明度对私有信息套利存在交互效应,随着信息披露透明度的提高,机构投资者信息搜寻对私有信息套利的边际效应下降。     

The Mirror Effect: Corporate Social Responsibility,Corporate Social Irresponsibility and Firm Performance in Coordinated Market Economies and Liberal Market Economies

We investigate the classic management debate of agency versus institutional pressures through the application of the varieties of capitalism literature. In particular, we examine corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate social irresponsibility (CSiR) and their relationships with firm performance in two types of capitalist systems: coordinated market economies (CMEs) and liberal market economies (LMEs). We note that while the CSR literature has tended to develop a balanced view on the influence of agency and institutional pressures, the CSiR literature has tended to emphasize the influence of agency. The latter appears to be a result of the fundamental attribution bias, where irresponsible corporate behaviours are attributed to individual managers or organizations, rather than the institutional environment. Our results, which include five years of data across 16 countries, show significantly greater CSR and significantly lower CSiR in CMEs compared with LMEs. Further, we find a positive relationship between CSR and firm performance in CMEs but not LMEs, and a negative relationship between CSiR and firm performance in LMEs but not CMEs. Overall, our results demonstrate the influence of the institutional environment, suggesting that corporate behaviours mirror the external environment.     

Corporate divestiture and performance: an institutional view

In this study, we investigate how the institutional environment affects shareholders’ reaction to a firm’s announcement of divestitures. Traditionally, divestiture research has adhered to a financial economics perspective, in which shareholders anticipate certain economic outcomes from corporate divestitures and react accordingly. However, this research has not delivered a distinct understanding of the performance effects of corporate divestitures. To structure and integrate previous work, we apply a neo-institutional perspective of the stock market. We argue that at certain times, the institutional support for corporate diversification is relatively low. During these periods, there is a high rate of divestitures. The high divestiture activity legitimizes this corporate action and leads to a positive reaction of the stock market to new divestiture announcements. This means that individual evaluations of the possible performance outcomes of divestments are not the only factor determining the stock market reaction to a corporate divestiture announcement. Rather, investors might consider the perceived institutionalization of this corporate action when making their purchasing decisions. Using a meta-analytical technique, we find support for our prediction that different performance effects of divestitures, as revealed by previous studies, can be attributed to different conditions of the macro-economic environment. We discuss the implications of this result for research and management practice.     

中国上市公司机构投资者对公司绩效影响的实证分析

伴随着2007年资本市场股权分置改革接近尾声,我国公司治理机制方面,在其实质上与形式上都产生了较有影响力的变化:一股独大的现象得到了改善,同股同权真正落实在每一个股东手上;同时资本市场也有了显著变化,以基金为主的形形色色的机构投资者粉墨登场,大量的闲散资金注入机构投资者。本文关注在后股权分置时代,机构投资者作为资本市场上实力与能力兼具的股东,能否对公司治理产生影响,从而改善公司绩效。通过建立机构投资者参与公司治理回归分析模型,来进行实证研究,为公司治理决策层和资本市场监管层提供科学依据。     

基于前景理论的跨市场状态转移多阶段资产配置研究

在行为金融前景理论框架下研究跨市场间的状态转移资产配置问题,构建隐Markov——混合正态分布模型描述股票、债券和商品混合市场间的状态特征,用Baum-Welch算法估计模型参数,并利用状态转移思想进行情景生成建立多阶段随机优化模型。进一步,以我国股票、债券和商品混合市场的实际数据为背景,利用滚动窗口方法实证分析基于状态转移的多阶段随机模型的表现,并与忽略状态转移特征的基准模型、等权重组合、沪深300指数的结果进行对比。结果表明,与其他组合相比,基于状态转移的投资组合有助于规避风险,且混合市场间的状态转移信息能够对前景理论投资者的最优投资决策产生影响。     

基于LSV模型的机构与个人羊群行为研究

超常规发展机构投资者并未有效抑制市场波动,侵害中小投资者利益的现象时有发生。为探究中国证券市场的投资者羊群倾向究竟是机构投资者还是个人投资者,本文使用2006年至2016年Wind数据库中年均950家所有可验证的机构数据以及某券商年均40万条个人交易数据,运用LSV模型对投资者羊群行为进行检验,并比较机构投资者与个人投资者的行为差异。在结合投资者发展结构和十年间的市场波动特征后研究发现,无论是公募基金、保险公司、券商、社保基金还是QFⅡ等机构投资者,均具有比个人投资者更显著的羊群效应,个人投资者中仅"大户"在部分年间显示出一定的羊群倾向。研究还创新性地发现了公募基金羊群倾向的季度波动效应,表现为一、三季度和二、四季度的明显差异,且振幅逐年加剧;保险公司的投资行为则趋于成熟缓和。     

Rapid Trading bei deutschen Aktienfonds: Evidenz aus einer großen deutschen Fondsgesellschaft

This paper is the first to examine rapid trading among German equity mutual fund investors. Using data on inflows and outflows provided by a large German mutual fund company for all of its equity funds, we find strong evidence for rapid trading. It is particularly pronounced for small funds, risky funds, funds with low nominal prices, and international funds. However, we find no evidence of market timing activities. Furthermore, unlike in the US, rapid trading is less pronounced for funds with high loads. This shows that rapid trading among German fund investors is not explained by churning due to brokers’ advice. Rather, our results are consistent with the view that some investors use mutual funds for short-term, speculative purposes. The funds among which we observe the strongest rapid trading show lottery-like characteristics. Regarding fund performance, we find (at most) only very weak evidence for a negative impact of rapid trading on fund performance before the fund scandal of 2003, and no evidence afterwards.     

产品市场竞争、融资约束与公司现金持有:基于中国制造业上市公司的实证分析

本文采用我国制造业上市公司2001年-2007年共2401个公司年的平衡面板数据,利用行业间竞争、行业内竞争两个维度的产品市场竞争变量,实证分析了我国制造业上市公司产品市场竞争对现金持有水平的综合影响。实证结果显示,对于所有制造业上市公司来说,产品市场竞争对公司现金持有存在显著的掠夺风险效应。在考虑公司融资约束的情况下,产品市场竞争对公司现金持有的掠夺风险和代理成本两种竞争效应被有效区分开来。融资约束公司表现为显著的掠夺风险效应,非融资约束公司则表现为显著的代理成本效应。这些研究结论不仅丰富和补充了产品市场竞争与公司现金持有之间的相关研究,也为公司实施积极的现金流风险管理和持有现金的高效利用提供了实践支持。