Wong Wai Hong. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 79-80). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Chapter 1. --- Introduction and Literature Review --- p.1 / Chapter 2. --- Spinoffs in an Asymmetric Framework --- p.6 / Chapter A. --- The Model / Chapter B. --- The Analysis / Chapter C. --- Market Value Maximization / Chapter D. --- Data Description / Chapter E. --- Total Market Value Analysis / Chapter 3. --- Case Study --- p.21 / Chapter A. --- Methodology / Chapter B. --- Empirical Results / Chapter 4. --- "Growth, Profitability and Financial Health" --- p.34 / Chapter A. --- Growth / Chapter B. --- Profitability / Chapter C. --- Financial Health / Chapter 5. --- Conclusion --- p.47 / Chapter 6. --- Tables --- p.49 / Chapter 7. --- Bibliography --- p.79

published_or_final_version / Business / Master / Master of Philosophy

This dissertation investigates the sources of growth which are available to conglomerate companies and draws some limited conclusions with regard to which are the major sources.

This dissertation investigates the association of operating leverage with stock returns, the value premium, and the profitability premium. Results in the first essay support the hypothesis that operating leverage is related to stock returns and the value premium across the sampled countries. Results are robust to cross-country differences, typical controls, multiple definitions of operating and financial leverage, and while controlling for the endogeneity of operating and financial leverage. This suggests that the rational explanation for the presence of the value premium lies in the underlying risk exposure of fixed asset risk of operating leverage which is expressed through the value premium. Results further support the hypothesis of strengthening labor protection increasing operating leverage. In turn, increased labor protection marginally negatively associated with the value premium, suggesting that labor protection reduces the value premium through financial leverage. However, because operating and financial leverage are oppositely affected by employment protection, the joint effect of this association may be cumulatively washed out in estimating value premium with employment protection legislation. Results in the second essay further support the hypothesis that operating leverage is related to stock returns and additionally support the hypothesis of operating leverage being associated to the profitability premium. The profit premium tends to be insignificant when generated within operating leverage portfolios, and the profit premium only tends to be significantly positive in the higher operating leverage portfolios. Furthermore, once operating leverage and profitability are orthogonalized from one another, the estimated coefficient of profitability is reduced by a magnitude of roughly 10. These results provide evidence in support of the profit premium being based on the riskiness of the firm through operating leverage, and therefore the profit premium is a rationally priced risk factor in stock returns. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2018. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Mok Ka Ming. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 31). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Chapter I --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter II --- Data Description --- p.4 / Chapter III --- Market risks for stocks --- p.6 / Chapter 1. --- Listing Location --- p.7 / Chapter 2. --- Operation Location --- p.9 / Chapter 3. --- Measurements --- p.10 / Chapter IV --- The Model --- p.13 / Chapter V --- Empirical Results --- p.16 / Chapter 1. --- Summary statistics --- p.16 / Chapter 2. --- Diagnostics Test --- p.17 / Chapter 3. --- The co-efficient --- p.18 / Chapter 4. --- Comparing the result with US dollar-denominated returns --- p.21 / Chapter VI --- Sub-period analysis --- p.26 / Chapter VII --- Market analysis --- p.29 / Chapter VIII --- Industrial analysis --- p.31 / Chapter IX --- Conclusion --- p.35 / Chapter X --- References --- p.37 / Chapter XI --- Appendix --- p.39

The purpose of financial reporting is to provide information that is useful for decision making. Recently, however, there has been a systematic decline in the usefulness of such information. Indeed, the current reporting model seems to be no longer sufficient mainly due to the fact that it ignores many of the nonfinancial intangible factors which are increasingly becoming important in determining corporate value and performance. That is, there is a need for the traditional reporting model to be modified or at least broadened to reflect Intangible Assets (IA) in order to enhance the usefulness of information being provided to different stakeholders. In the absence of mandatory reporting requirements, one alternative way of disseminating information regarding IA is to engage in voluntary disclosure practices. It has also been suggested that companies which would benefit the most from such practice are those originating from emerging economies looking to expand into international markets. While there exists an array of empirical studies which have examined the voluntary disclosure practices of corporations from developed economies, less considered are the reporting practices of emerging market companies regarding their IA. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the voluntary disclosure practices of the top 200 emerging market companies regarding the variety, nature and extent of IA and to consider some of the factors that may be associated with the level of such disclosure. Using a disclosure index based on the Value Chain Scoreboard??? (Lev, 2001), narrative sections of the 2002 annual reports of the top 200 emerging market companies are analysed. The findings indicate that emerging market companies engage in voluntary disclosure practices in order to disseminate different varieties of mainly quantitative IA information to their global stakeholders. Further, the variety and the extent of IA disclosure are associated with corporate specific factors such as leverage, adoption of IFRS/US GAAP, industry type, and price to book ratio. Contrary to the existing literature on voluntary disclosure, however, firm size and ownership concentration are not found to be associated with the IA disclosure level. Country specific factors such as the level of risks associated with economic policy and legal system are also found to be significantly associated with the IA voluntary disclosure level.

With the increasing call for accountability of significant marketing communication spending, quantifying and measuring the contribution of marketing communication to market performance is increasingly a requirement for sustainability in all management practices. In addition, the resource-based view (RBV) suggests that a firm's marketing communication creates intangible market-based assets and that these assets strengthen a firm's market and financial performance. Recent developments of the market-based assets theory focus on corporate reputation as an intangible market-based asset, suggesting that a favorable reputation is an intangible asset that increases a firm's performance. This study examined the effect of advertising and publicity on corporate reputation and market performance and hypothesized that a firm's advertising and publicity generated favorable corporate reputations and high levels of sales revenues in certain firms. Hypotheses were tested by a time-series analysis using the panel data of 18 companies over a 21-year period from 1985 to 2005. The results indicated that advertising and publicity have significant effects on corporate reputation for certain companies. Other variables, such as a firm's dividend yield to investors, market value, diversification, and profitability were significantly related to assessments of corporate reputation for certain companies, but the direction of the relationship varied from company to company. For example, as expected, low dividend yields induce high assessments of corporate reputation for certain companies. A firm's current market value also affects assessments of a firm's reputation. More diversified companies yield lower corporate reputations for certain companies. Regarding the relationship between marketing communication and sales revenues, advertising and publicity have significant effects on sales revenues for some companies. A firm's R&D expenditures, the focus of the firm, and firm size also showed a significant positive relevance to sales revenues for certain companies. / text

No abstract available. / Thesis (MBA)-University of Natal, 2003.

The topic of mergers and acquisitions, and their ability to create shareholder value, is one that continues to raise a fair amount of debate. Many studies have been carried out, both locally and abroad. They have attempted to analyse the wealth effects of mergers and acquisitions on both the shareholders of the acquiring and acquired firms. In some instances the findings have been fairly consistent across companies on the various stock exchanges, while other have produced controversial results. Generally the findings regarding the acquired firms have been consistent, across most studies, but the results regarding the acquiring firms has been less straightforward. This paper discusses the various types of mergers and acquisitions that a company may undertake, as well as the possible rationale for undertaking such investments. Some of the more recent and well-known studies that have been undertaken are then discussed, and an attempt is made to find a common thread amongst all the various studies. Further factors which "research has found to have an impact on the success or failure of mergers and acquisitions are then discussed, with the purpose of trying to identify the key reasons for merger failure, and hence the failure to create shareholder value for the acquiring firm. In other words, what are the traits or key factors that lead to successful mergers and acquisitions, ones that do not destroy shareholder value? Finally, the area of divestitures is discussed, because it is often believed that they are a key admission of the failure of past merger activity. Trends in merger and divestiture activity are also examined. Finally, a conclusion is drawn from the various studies and readings that have been done. The basis of this paper is primarily a secondary literature review. Two case studies are then undertaken; one which focus's on acquisitions by an IT Company which fail to create shareholder value, and the second examines an unrelated acquisition and subsequent divestiture by a listed company in the transport sector. A significant limitation that was encountered in doing research on the topic was the lack of availability of recent studies undertaken. The majority of the work done on this subject was researched during the 1960's to 1980's. With the only significant South African study being conducted by Aftleck-Graves et al in 1988. Although recent articles and commentary on the subject have been written in the late 1990's, I was unable to find any recent studies. The majority of research undertaken has also been done in the American and European markets, with as mentioned, only one or two studies being conducted on the JSE. / Thesis (MBA)-University of Natal, Durban, 2001.

We attempt to answer the following key questions: What are the revaluation effects and the impacts on the cost of capital, volatility, and correlation with world market returns from stock market liberalization in emerging market countries? These questions have been studied extensively at the market-level, i.e. using country indices, but not at the firm level. In the market-level analysis, there is increasing concern whether the country indices are proper means to answer those questions, for example they may not represent the real holdings of foreign portfolio investors after liberalization. Indeed, foreign portfolio investors are known to prefer investment in large and well-known firms. Hence, the opening of capital markets should have a differential impact across securities depending on foreign investors' demand. In order to take into account the potentially different impacts caused by foreign investors' demand, we use individual firm data as well as market-level indices. Our analysis is based on the cross-sectional and time-series panel regression method. / Our test results using country indices show statistically and economically significant revaluation effects, and increases in the cost of capital. While the stock market volatility increases, its correlation with world market return does not change after stock market liberalization. More important than these market-level findings, we report significantly different impacts of stock market liberalization, based on firm size, which is used as a proxy for foreign investors' demand. Large firms tend to exhibit large revaluation effects, insignificant change in the cost of capital, small increases in volatility, and increases in correlation with the world market from liberalization. Small firms show small revaluation effects, increases in the cost of capital, large increases in volatility and decreases in correlation with world market returns after liberalization. Our results have important implications for international investors seeking to manage their global exposure as well as for policy makers considering capital market liberalization.