The restrictive listing requirements imposed by the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange results in the listing of high quality companies, while at the same time provides a higher degree of investor protection. These requirements can however be an obstacle for small and growing companies to go public and raise capital. Thus AIM has developed in order to facilitate the growth of these companies by its lighter listing requirements. This thesis is focused on three outcomes of the lighter listing requirements of AIM. First, AIM companies have a high ownership concentration and lower investor protection, thus enabling blockholders to have a significant impact on their value. This thesis finds that non-managerial and managerial blockholders have quadratic and cubic relationships with firm value respectively. Also, both types of blockholder increase the value of the firm until the first break point which is approximately 30 percent. This is almost exactly the point that the LSE defines as a cut-off point at which the blockholder is regarded as a controlling shareholder. Second, companies moving from the Main market to the AIM impair their information environment when entering the AIM; the information environment is measured by the stock’s liquidity and volatility. This thesis finds that firms experience lower trading activity and lower trading volume, which results in lower liquidity and volatility than matched companies that remain in the Main Market. Third, IPOs listing in the AIM are underpriced in order to compensate for risk. However, the level of underpricing can be alleviated by appointing a reputable Nomad. Underpricing facilitates IPOs to achieve higher aftermarket liquidity in two ways: First, directly by attracting investor attention; and second by diversifying ownership. However, aftermarket liquidity is evident for a longer period than other markets because of a longer lock up period.

abstract: I examine the determinants and implications of the level of director monitoring. I use the distance between directors' domiciles and firm headquarters as a proxy for the level of monitoring and the introduction of a new airline route between director domicile and firm HQ as an exogenous shock to the level of monitoring. I find a strong relation between distance and both board meeting attendance and director membership on strategic versus monitoring committees. Increased monitoring, as measured by a reduction in effective distance, by way of addition of a direct flight, is associated with a 3% reduction in firm value. A reduction in effective distance is also associated with less risk-taking, lower stock return volatility, lower accounting return volatility, lower R&D; spending, fewer acquisitions, and fewer patents. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Business Administration 2014

Today, organisations rely on IT systems which are constantly expected to improve return on investment without an increase in costs. These expectations have resulted in greater importance of the use and management of IT resources. In light of this increased importance of IT management, organisations turned towards frameworks, such as COBIT and ITIL, to better manage their IT resources. Although both frameworks have gained remarkable popularity, there is a lack of detailed information regarding their interrelation within an organisation. This creates a problem where an organisation that has implemented ITIL is unable to determine the level of COBIT compliance. Without being able to determine the level of compliance, it is not possible to ensure that the business requirements for information are being met therefore preventing an organisation from ensuring that their business objectives are achieved. The goal of this dissertation is to establish, from a security perspective, a Model that links COBIT and ITIL together on a detailed level to show their interrelation within an organisation and to provide a means of determining COBIT compliance through the use of the ITIL framework. This will effectively bridge the gap between IT Governance and IT Service Management. Before being able to develop such a Model, it was necessary to first link the COBIT and ITIL frameworks to show that such a Model can be developed. It was possible to establish such a link between COBIT and ITIL as both frameworks are based on a similar process. This is followed by determining the overlap between the security components of COBIT and ITIL. The results indicate that ITIL is insufficient to address all the security aspects of COBIT and additional control measures were required. These control measures werefound in an external framework and integrated into ITIL to complete the overlap. The completed overlap allowed for full COBIT compliance through the use of the ITIL with the additional control measures. The complete overlap between COBIT and ITIL allowed for the development of a framework that showed the interrelation between the security aspects of COBIT and ITIL within an organisation. This framework was then used as a foundation to develop a process of determining COBIT compliance using ITIL. This process of determining COBIT compliance was validated through the development of a software prototype. The framework and the process of determining COBIT compliance constitute the required Model which can be used to solve the identified problem. This dissertation also provides a strong platform for further research involving the areas of IT Governance and IT Service Management. It provides research topics into linking other parts of COBIT and ITIL that are not security related. The process of determining COBIT compliance can also be extended to function with other operational frameworks. This dissertation has also discovered an interesting relationship that exists within the COBIT frameworks. / Prof. Labuschagne

Introduction: There are many components that are required for an organisation to be successful in its chosen field. These components vary from corporate culture, to corporate leadership, to effective protection of important assets. These and many more contribute to the success of an organisation. One component that should be a definitive part in the strategy of any organisation is information security. Information security is one of the fastest growing sub-disciplines in the Information Technology industry, indicating the importance of this field (Zylt, 2001, online). Information security is concerned with the implementation and support of control measures to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of electronically stored information (BS 7799-1, 1999, p 1). Information security is achieved by applying control measures that will lessen the threat, reduce the vulnerability or diminish the impact of losing an information asset. However, as a result of the fact that an increasing number of employees have access to information, the protection of information is no longer only dependent on physical and technical controls, but also, to a large extent, on the actions of employees utilising information resources. All employees have a role to play in safeguarding information and they need guidance in fulfilling these roles (Barnard, 1998, p 12). This guidance should originate from senior management, using good corporate governance practices. The effective leadership resulting from good corporate governance practices is another component in an organisation that contributes to its success (King Report, 2001, p 11). Corporate governance is defined as the exercise of power over and responsibility for corporate entities (Blackwell Publishers, 2000, online). Senior management, as part of its corporate governance duties, should encourage employees to adhere to the behaviour specified by senior management to contribute towards a successful organisation. Senior management should not dictate this behaviour, but encourage it as naturally as possible, resulting in the correct behaviour becoming part of the corporate culture. If the inner workings of organisations are explored it would be found that there are many hidden forces at work that determine how senior management and the employees relate to one another and to customers. These hidden forces are collectively called the culture of the organisation (Hagberg Consulting Group, 2002, online). Cultural assumptions in organisations grow around how people in the organisation relate to each other, but that is only a small part of what corporate culture actually covers (Schein, 1999, p 28). Corporate culture is the outcome of all the collective, taken-for-granted assumptions that a group has learned throughout history. Corporate culture is the residue of success. In other words, it is the set of procedures that senior management and employees of an organisation follow in order to be successful (Schein, 1999, p 29). Cultivating an effective corporate culture, managing an organisation using efficient corporate governance practices and protecting the valuable information assets of an organisation through an effective information security program are, individually, all important components in the success of an organisation. One of the biggest questions with regard to these three fields is the relationship that should exist between information security, corporate governance and corporate culture. In other words, what can the senior management of an organisation, using effective corporate governance practices, do to ensure that information security practices become a subconscious response in the corporate culture?.

Numerous studies have used the wedge between control rights and cash flow rights as a proxy for the unobservable likelihood of expropriation (i.e., controlling shareholders tunneling resources from minority shareholders). Therefore, any negative relationship between the wedge and firm value found in previous studies can be interpreted as a relationship between the likelihood of expropriation and firm value. However, the results of this study suggest that the wedge is endogenous and related to firm characteristics, which can be classified into five categories: transparency, the firm's growth and capital requirement, risk, the pledgeability of cash flows and assets, and technology. Based on a sample of 4,185 firm-year observations from 1,202 public firms in the Hong Kong stock market from 2009 to 2013, this study examines whether the wedge remains a good proxy for expropriation if firm characteristics are considered. The results show that the significance of the wedge disappears when it is included alongside firm characteristics in the regressions, meaning that any power of the wedge to explain firm value can be attributed to the effect of these firm characteristics on firm value and not on the effect of the likelihood of expropriation. Moreover, a positive relationship between the wedge and firm value for family-controlled group firms is observed. Therefore, the wedge is not a good proxy for the likelihood of expropriation.

The increase in the number of financial restatements in recent years has resulted in a significant decrease in the amount of market capitalization for restated companies. Prior literature does not differentiate between single and multiple restatements announcements. This research investigates the inter-relationships among multiple financial restatements, corporate governance, market microstructure and the firm's rate of return in the form of three essays by differentiating between single and multiple restatement announcement companies. First essay examines the stock performance of companies announcing the financial restatement multiple times. The postulation is that prior research overestimates the abnormal return by not separating single restatement companies from multiple restatement companies. This study investigates how market penalizes the companies that announce restatement more than once. Differentiating the restatement announcement data based on number of restatement announcements, the results support for non persistence hypothesis that the market has no memory and negative abnormal returns obtained after each of the restatement announcements are completely random. Second essay examines the multiple restatement announcements and its perceived resultant information asymmetry around the announcement day. This study examines the pattern of information asymmetry for these announcements in terms of whether the bid-ask spread widens around the announcement day. The empirical analysis supports the hypotheses that the spread does widen not only around the first restatement announcement day but around every subsequent announcement days as well. The third essay empirically examines the financial and corporate governance characteristics of single and multiple restatement announcements companies. The analysis shows that corporate governance variables influence the occurrence of multiple restatement announcements and can distinguish multiple restatements announcement companies from single restatement announcement companies.

As the title suggests, this thesis focuses on the issues arising from the establishment of audit committees in listed companies in China, which hitherto have been adopted by companies on a voluntary basis alongside the pre-existing structure of supervisory boards, rather than as a mandatory requirement. Regarding this unique practice in China, this thesis attempts to address three research objectives: 1. To understand the effectiveness of supervisory boards (SBs) and audit committees (ACs) in China. 2. To understand how the operations of SBs and ACs improve the effectiveness of supervisory governance functions in China. 3. To understand the co-ordination between SBs and ACs in organisations. The first objective is investigated by applying quantitative methods of ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and analysis of panel data. It is discovered that the companies with audit committees have more effective supervisory functions when companied to those without audit committees. The second objective was pursued by applying qualitative methods in the form of two case studies constructed using interviews and surveys conducted both via telephone and in face-to-face interviews. It is found that in both the case studies audit committees were established with the expectation of enhancing the effectiveness of the companies' supervisory functions. Furthermore, the face-to-face interview survey of five listed companies reveals that companies with audit committees in China still face issues of overlapping and missing supervisory functions between supervisory boards and audit committees. Thus the third research objective, regarding the co-ordination between the supervisory board and the audit committee in the organisation to find solutions to this very problem, is particularly relevant for corporate governance in China. This objective is investigated by interviewing two governors and conducting telephone surveys. The results highlight that there is the general expectation that these structures should be co-ordinated as one unit. There is also a demand to establish an independent control system to strengthen oversight functions, to reduce oversight costs, and to ensure the independence of the supervisors and audit committee members in order that they can execute oversight tasks, and to empower them against the executive directors and senior managers by promoting their status in the organisation.

M.Comm. / The normal pattern of life is birth, childhood, adulthood, old age and death. South Africa can still be seen in its childhood shoes in relation to countries like the USA, Japan and others. However, the playing field in the international arena that South Africa has to operate in when it comes to survival, is not divided between children and adults but instead, we are all competing on equal terms, and South African companies will have to realise that only the strong will survive. It is with this view in mind that this study has been undertaken in the hope that at completion South Africa will have its own management wave. South Africa is a country on its own with a history like no other country and a diversity like no other country. Therefore South Africa needs her own management wave, a wave out of South Africa for South Africa. The international competitive playing field is something new to South Africa and companies will have to adapt, or in years to come only a few of the current companies will have survived. To enable South African management to determine their own management a comparison of South Africa with her main competitors will be done, This will help to determine what is still needed in South Africa on the economical, political and educational fields and to help determine what South Africa need to survive for now and for the future. With this in mind it will be possible to start creating South Africa's own management wave which will enable companies, big and small, to still be part of South Africa in time to come, and to withstand the onslaught of overseas companies . South Africa is young, and has a very turbulent history, but with past happenings like: The Big Trek; The Boer Wars; The years of apartheid; The coming of democracy; it is clear that the South African people has got the will, stamina and strength to survive. South Africans now need to realise "EX UNITATE VIRES". It is with this in mind that the conclusion of this study will show South African companies, big and small, a new and unique management wave to follow. This new management wave will lead South Africa to a brighter future and a better tomorrow.

By integrating signaling research with an institutional perspective we examine how country of origin, corporate governance, and host market effects impact foreign IPO performance. Using a sample of 202 foreign IPOs listed in the U.S. or U.K in 2002-2007 results indicate both the legal environment surrounding these organizations in their countries of origin and board independence impact the success of foreign firms at IPO. However, the institutional environment of the chosen IPO market impacts the salience of country and corporate governance signals for foreign IPO firms suggesting a more contextualized framework of IPO valuation is necessary.

Corporate Governance and in particular, the role of the board of directors, have been placed at the centre of attention due to the recent well-publicized corporate scandals (Adams, Hermalin,&Weisbach, 2009). In South Africa, both the King II and recently published King III reports emphasise the importance of the board of directors, as being the crucial aspect of the South African corporate governance system (Institute of Directors, Southern Africa, 2002, 2009).The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between corporate governance and company performance. This was achieved by defining six specific characteristics of the board of directors in relation to corporate governance (independent variables of board independence, CEO-Chairman duality, staggered boards, board size and the presence and composition of the board remuneration committee), as well as identifying five company performance measures (dependent variables of net profit margin, return on equity, return on assets, share price and dividend payout).In reviewing the available literature, it was found that there is a lack of an appropriate and publicly available corporate governance measurement tool in South Africa. The Delphi technique was used to garner the views of four experts in the corporate governance field, in order to obtain their views as to what constitutes the research selected independent variables. The emergent themes from these interviews guided the measurement of these board variables and empirical testing against the selected company performance measures using the 21 Consumer Goods Companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange with published financial statements over the time period commencing on 01 January 2006 and ending on 31 December 2010.The overall results of this study indicate that the vast majority of board selected variables relating to corporate governance had a positive relationship with company performance. Of the six independent variables selected for testing, board independence, board size and composition of the board remuneration committee were found to have statistically significant relationships with the dependent variables of company performance, while the presence of a board remuneration committee indicated a moderate relationship (with only return on assets and net profit margin indicating a significant relationship) and staggered boards revealed no statistical significant difference.The relationship between CEO-Chairman duality and company performance could not be assessed, due to the sector data set revealing only one instance in which this duality existed. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted