Journal of Business Finance and Accounting

Abstract:  This study examines the relation between bank relations and market performance in Thailand, an economy in which commercial banks play a crucial role through lending relationship and, for a number of companies, equity ownership. Overall, bank relationships, both equity‐based and debt‐based, positively affect capital investment. However, there is a negative relation between lending relationships, both short‐term and long‐term, and market performance indicating that bank lending may not always be consistent with value maximization. There is also evidence of a positive marginal effect of bank monitoring through equity ownership on market performance. Further, the relation between bank equity ownership and market performance appears to be non‐linear with a concave function. Ownership by corporate insiders is also negatively related to bank equity ownership. Overall, the findings highlight the detrimental effects of excessive short‐term debt usage, one of the factors believed to contribute to the financial crisis in Thailand, and the marginal benefit of the equity‐based relationship on firm value.

Abstract:  New Zealand provides a natural laboratory to test whether knowledge spillovers arise from auditor‐provided non‐audit services. Unlike prior research, we do not assume constant audit quality but first test whether audit quality varies with auditor‐provided non‐audit services and audit efficiency. Results show that higher non‐audit fees paid to the auditor in conjunction with shorter audit lag does not reduce the quality of the audit. Results reveal a negative association between non‐audit fees and audit lag, thus suggesting the presence of knowledge spillovers. However, the knowledge spillover effect is limited to the city office providing both the audit and non‐audit services.

This paper examines the issue of auditor concentration in the UK during the period from 1991 to 1995. It shows that in 1995 the Big Six held 75% of the total number of audits and collectively earned 92% of the total audit fees. There was only a small increase in auditor concentration during the five year period, resulting from companies switching from small audit firms to Big Six and newly listed companies choosing a Big Six firm. The paper also examines auditor concentration within industries. Finally, the study assesses the measurement methods most commonly used in auditor concentration studies.

Abstract:  This paper examines the implications of mandatory IFRS adoption on the accounting quality of banks in twelve EU countries. Specifically, we analyse how the change in the recognition and measurement of banks’ main operating accrual item, the loan loss provision, affects income smoothing behaviour and timely loss recognition. We find that the restriction to recognise only incurred losses under IAS 39 significantly reduces income smoothing. This effect is less pronounced in countries with stricter bank supervision, widely dispersed bank ownership and for EU banks cross‐listed in the US. This provides additional evidence that institutions matter in shaping financial reporting outcomes. Further, the application of the incurred loss approach results in less timely loan loss recognition implying delayed recognition of future expected losses. In the light of the ongoing financial crisis it is questionable whether this is a desirable financial reporting outcome of mandatory IFRS adoption.

We identify firm innovation as a channel through which the treatment of employees affects firm value. Long‐term incentive theory supports positive effects of ‘good’ employee treatment on innovation. Alternatively, entrenchment theory suggests such treatment will lead to complacency and shirking, hence deterring innovation. These opposing views merit investigation since human capital is increasingly essential to the growth and success of a firm. Using the KLD database and patent/citation data, we find a significant positive relationship between favorable employee treatment and the innovation quantity and quality of a firm. Furthermore, we find that the positive treatment of employees improves innovation focus – more innovation related to firms’ core business, leading to greater firm value via the increased economic value of patents. These findings, robust to endogeneity concerns, provide support for the long‐term incentive hypothesis, suggesting that well‐treated employees increase firm innovation. Thus, firm innovation represents a channel through which positive employee treatment enhances firm value.

We investigate how firms strategically vary their disclosure policies in response to labor unemployment concern. Using changes in state unemployment insurance laws as exogenous variations of labor unemployment concern, we show that firms provide more bad news forecasts when unemployment concern is low. This relation is stronger when firms are financially constrained, when CEOs and CFOs have higher equity incentives, and when workers are likely to be affected more by unemployment. Our findings are not driven by earnings management reversal or underlying performance changes, and are robust to a battery of identification tests. Finally, we find a similar effect of unemployment concern on disclosure using the tone of 10‐K and 10‐Q filings as an alternative proxy for corporate disclosure. Overall, our findings suggest that labor unemployment concern is an important consideration for corporate discretionary disclosure.

The long‐run performance of equity securities subsequent to announcements of open market repurchases (OMR) remains a contentious topic. In this paper we propose the “dichotomous expectations hypothesis” which posits that insider trading following share repurchase announcements reveals private information concerning the future operating performance of announcing firms. In particular, insider abnormal purchases (abnormal sales) should predict an improvement (decline) in operating performance that leads to higher (lower) long‐run stock returns. Our hypothesis offers a credible economic link between insider trading and subsequent long‐run stock performance through the intervening variable of operating performance. The empirical results show consistency with this linkage.

Abstract:  We investigate the extent to which employee stock option (ESO) cutbacks around issuance of SFAS 123R are explained by eliminating the favorable accounting treatment available to firms prior to SFAS 123R and the economic consequences of such ESO cutbacks. We find a reduction in the grant day fair value of ESOs to all employees, which is an increasing function of the accounting benefits the firm derived from ESOs’ favorable accounting treatment prior to SFAS 123R. The removal of these accounting benefits explains 20% (45%) of ESO cutbacks around the issuance of SFAS 123R for our sample median (mean) firm. We do not find that firms cutting back more on the use of ESOs experienced a greater decrease in firm performance. Rather, a dollar increase in ESOs is associated with higher future productivity and higher future firm value in the post‐SFAS 123R period. Collectively, our evidence suggests that ESOs’ favorable accounting treatment prior to SFAS 123R provided firms with incentives to make compensation decisions that minimized accounting expense but did not maximize firm value. We show that firms were more likely to replace ESOs with restricted stock and long‐term incentive plans post‐SFAS 123R but the substitution was far less than dollar for dollar.

Abstract:  We examine the effect of nonrecurring accounting transactions on stock option grants for a sample of US companies. After controlling for both the economic and corporate governance‐related determinants of option grants, we find that the aggregate value of stock option grants is more positively related to nonrecurring gains than to nonrecurring losses. We also examine whether the asymmetric treatment of nonrecurring gains and losses arises because (1) information contained in the nonrecurring transactions is related to firms’ long‐term prospects, (2) weak corporate governance fails to curb more favorable executive pay arrangements, (3) executives possess superior bargaining power in the labor marketplace, and (4) firms have significant growth opportunities. While we find no support for the first explanation and some support for the third, we find more consistent support for the growth explanation and two factors related to the corporate governance explanation: director‐executive duality and the frequency of board meetings.