Thesis (Ph.D.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2005. / "Submitted to Department of Economics and Finance in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy" Includes bibliographical references (leaves 84-89)

Univ., Diss.--Giessen, 2007.

European Business School, Diss.--Oestrich-Winkel, 2005.

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Management in Finance and Investment, 2017 / Capital markets reforms in emerging, and particularly African markets are of a growing concern. Despite various institutional reforms that began in the early 1980s, the capital markets in emerging countries still exhibit signs of illiquidity, high volatility of returns, high concentration levels and inefficiency. Ambiguous results for such reforms have brought into question the affectivity of major capital markets reforms such as change of settlement cycles, particularly in countries where stock markets are sponsored with public funds. This thesis, therefore, intends to assess the effectiveness of capital markets reforms on development of stock markets by looking at the impact of changing settlement cycle on risk and liquidity at JSE. The objective is met through an assessment of a link between institutional structures and stock micro-structural variables, especially liquidity and risk in the literature review and an assessment of past studies on effects of stock market reforms and changes of settlement cycle on liquidity, risk and efficiency of stock markets. The study then tests the effects of settlement cycle on risk by assessing changes in abnormal returns and changes of variance of returns as a result of settlement cycle change at JSE. It also looks at the impact on liquidity by assessing the effects on the illiquidity measure first proposed by Amihund and Mendeison (2002). The study finds that change of settlement cycle at JSE had positive effects of reducing risk and increasing liquidity. The study also finds that there are no effects on trading activity and concludes that changing settlement cycle impacts largely on risk and to a smaller extend liquidity. / MT 2019

This thesis examines the changes in the investment behavior of parent companies that issue tracking stocks as a financial engineering instrument. Several authors and researchers have different perspectives on the performance and efficiency of this instrument. This thesis studies the efficiency of internal capital market, taking evidence from the performance of tracking stocks. Subsequently, the real question of this thesis is whether the sensitivity of investment in parent companies changes before and after the issue of tracking stocks. In the analyses performed, I obtained results consistent with the view that the sensitivity of investment increases after the tracking stock issue. However, the results are not conclusive and not statistically significant. I conclude that the results represent at best weak evidence that investment in the parent company becomes more sensitive to investment opportunity after the tracking stock issue.

In Fulfilment of the Ph.D. Programme in Finance Graduate School of Business Administration University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg, South Africa / E.K. 2019

Yes

Thesis (M.B.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1986.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1982. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND DEWEY / Bibliography: leaf 196. / by Adam Lerrick. / Ph.D.

This thesis includes one essay on incomplete information and two essays on the capital market implications of asymmetric information. The acquisition of information and its dissemination to all economic units are central activities in capital markets. Limits to information diffusion may exist when market participants have limited processing ability or when market structure causes information asymmetry to persist. Merton (1987) proposes a simple capital market equilibrium model with incomplete information, in which difference in a stock’s investor recognition affects its cost of capital. Myers and Majluf (1984) lay out the theoretical foundation for the role of asymmetric information in corporate finance and its capital market implications. The first essay tests and offers support to Merton’s (1987) theory. In the U.S. market, using the breadth of ownership among retail investors as a proxy for investor recognition, I show that a long-short portfolio based on the annual change of shareholder base earns a compounded annual abnormal return of 6.42% after controlling for the Fama-French three factors. These results are more pronounced among young, low visibility and high idiosyncratic volatility stocks. Moreover, I present evidence that the investor recognition effect can explain approximately 20% of the puzzling net equity issuance effect documented by Pontiff and Woodgate (2008). The second essay suggests a novel signaling mechanism in the framework of asymmetric information. When a firm’s convertible debt is issued, it is not only determined by the fundamentals of the firm such as past stock performance, but also related to whether this performance is realized during the tenure of current CEO who decides the issues. I define the performance that the current CEO achieves in the firm ever since the CEO comes to the helm as CEO-specific performance. Higher CEOspecific performance leads to (1) a higher probability of convertible issues, and (2) a less negative abnormal stock return in response to the convertible issue announcement, controlling for other firm characteristics. These evidences indicate that CEO-specific performance serves as a credible information signal to influence the adverse selection costs between the firm and outside investors in convertible bond financing. The third essay explores the possibility of asymmetric information in explaining the pronounced share issue anomaly in the cross-sectional variations of stock returns, as documented by Pontiff and Woodgate (2008). A lot of equity share issue and repurchase actions are actively determined by the decision of corporate stakeholders, such as employees at the stock options exercises. As these stakeholders hold a large amount of private information about the firm, it is in their optimal decisions to try to time the exercise of their share purchase activity, but outside investors are likely to fail to interpret the information revealed from these actions. I present strong evidence that a negative relation between share issues and stock returns is affected to a greater extent when the information asymmetry problem is more severe. / published_or_final_version / Business / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy