This dissertation investigates whether firms strategically disclose accounting restatements by coordinating restatement announcements with earnings releases, delaying the announcement of income-decreasing restatements, or obscuring restatement announcements by failing to disclose news of a restatement on a Form 8-K filing. I examine restatements announced after a Securities and Exchange Commission rule (effective August 24, 2004) that mandates a unique 8-K filing for restatements. Consistent with an attempt to lessen the negative impact of a restatement announcement, I find that when firms package restatement announcements with earnings releases they most often pair small income-decreasing restatements with positive earnings surprises. I also find that monitoring by the SEC decreases the probability of firms' mixing restatement and earnings news. On average, firms delay announcements of income-decreasing restatements longer than announcements of income-increasing restatements, and institutional ownership is positively associated with more timely disclosures of restatement news. I show that firms with weak corporate governance or less external monitoring are more likely to make news of a restatement difficult to find. Restatements performed without a Form 8-K filing are much less likely to be disclosed in a company-issued press release or to receive attention in the business press, and I find some evidence that the initial market reaction to obscure restatement announcements is less negative than the reaction to restatements disclosed transparently. Collectively, these results suggest that even in the presence of strict disclosure requirements, some firms attempt to strategically manage the timing and transparency of restatement announcements and investors do not appear to undo the effects of firms' strategic behavior. / text

This study is an empirical investigation of the managements’ motivations behind corporate equity repurchases in the open market, via private repurchase, or through self tender offer. The hypotheses concerning motivations for stock repurchases investigated in this dissertation include (1) signalling undervaluation of stock prices; (2) free cash flows; and (3) increasing leverage. A series of statistical analysis and tests are conducted against the empirical implications concerning the three decision variables in a repurchase decision process: (1) whether to repurchase; (2) what method (self tender, open market, and private repurchase) to use; and (3) the size and the price of repurchase under each motivational hypothesis, using the sample of all repurchases announced from January, 1986 through April, 1989. The motivational proxies are (1) the percentage changes of the median (and mean) earnings forecasts in the first, second, third months after the announcement of a repurchase program from the month prior to the repurchase for signalling hypothesis; (2) Tobin’s Q, the ratio of a firm’s total market value to the market-value replacement costs of its assets, based on the Lindenburg-Ross Algorithm for the free cash flow hypothesis (another measure is also used in this dissertation, that is, the net cash flow after taxes and dividends relative to the market value of a firm’s common stock); arid (3) the market-value based debt-equity ratios for the increasing leverage hypothesis. The empirical portion of this study is composed of four sections: (1) a comparison study of subsamples of repurchases with their control samples of non-repurchasing firms constructed by the criteria of data availability in both the /B/E/S and the COMPUSTAT database, three-digit industry code, and the market value of common stocks; (2) a comparison study of the three repurchasing methods; (3) the determination of the terms of repurchases; and (4) the market reaction to the announcement of repurchase and its relationship with the motivational proxies. The major conclusions of this study are as follows: 1. The signalling hypothesis is supported for the sample of open market repurchases which occurred over the 1987 crash period (from October 19 to November 9, 1987). 2. The free cash flow hypothesis is supported for the sample of ordinary open market repurchases which occurred outside the 1987 crash period. 3. None of the three motivations investigated in this study is supported for the sample of private repurchases. 4. The results are not conclusive for the sample of self tender offers, though the signalling hypothesis and the free cash flow hypothesis are not rejected. / Ph. D.

The purposes of this study are (1) an attempt to set up a standard of measurement whereby an investor can evaluate favorable or unfavorable sales growth of a particular company over a period of years, and (2) to provide a list of companies which have shown unusual ability to grow.

An effort to determine how the ratios of leading corporations changed during World War II and in the two peace-time years following.

Using 1,473 going private transactions completed between 1985 and 2007, I assess whether the increase in going private transactions that occurred after the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) was driven by SOX, or whether this phenomenon continues an ongoing historical trend. To examine this issue, I initially used structural break tests and intervention analysis. From the initial techniques, I find support that the passage of SOX increased going private transactions for these categories. Secondarily, I use Granger causality tests and impulse response functions to examine the link between going private transactions and the public stock market. When I categorize going private transactions according to the type of acquirer, transaction size, and target industry, I find bi-directional Granger causality relationships between smaller-sized going private transactions and the S&P 500 Index (or Tobin's Q). I also find several unidirectional Granger causality relationships for some categories of going private transactions, based on the type of acquirer or the target industry, to the S&P 500 Index (or to Tobin's Q). The impulse response of going private transactions (or the public stock market) to a shock in the public stock market (or going private transactions) is not immediate, but is delayed two to three quarters. The link between going private transactions and the public stock market is an ongoing phenomenon, continuing a historical trend for going private transactions. For going private transactions with structural breaks, SOX affects the linkage but not for going private transactions with no structural break.

Corporate finance researchers have long been puzzled by low corporate debt ratios given debt's corporate tax advantage. What makes the capital structure debate especially intriguing is that the different theories represent such different, and in some ways almost diametrically opposed, decision-making processes.