Thesis (MTech (Public Relations Management))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2017. / Investor Relations (IR) has become a key area of focus in academic and professional debates over the last few decades. Although the identity of the field is contested, with both finance and communication disciplines claiming the fledgling field, there is consensus across disciplines that communication is paramount in IR success. However, a number of scholars (see Schutzmann, 2013; Laskin, 2011; Watson, 2008) argue that IR is not being fully utilised to maximise fair valuation and obtain favourable return on company investments due to lack of strategic communication expertise among IR practitioners who usually have a purely financial background. It is against this background that this study evaluated communication strategies employed by IR practitioners in South Africa to build and maintain relationships with investor stakeholders. The purpose is to contribute towards theoretical debates on strategic communication practice in IR, an area that remains under theorised and understudied, especially within a developing country context. The theoretical frame of the study was derived from public relations Excellence theory and the two-way symmetrical communication (Grunig and Hunt, 1984). The research methodology of the study was qualitative and employed an explorative design to gather data through a combination of document analysis, indepth interviews and content analysis. The findings show that financial and non-financial information is disseminated to investor stakeholders. However, the communication of financial information by IR professionals to investor stakeholders remains dominant in South Africa. Importantly, two-way symmetrical communication and two-way asymmetrical communication strategies are used in different ways to build and maintain relationships and to disclose mandatory key corporate information to investor stakeholders. One-on-one meetings in different formats and online dialogue with closed feedback emerged as the dominant key two-way symmetrical communication strategies of nurturing and sustaining relationships with investor stakeholders. This includes two-way asymmetrical communication strategies such as the corporate publications and IR websites. IR policies that promote two-way symmetrical communication, trust, honest, transparency and credibility emerged in the study as being implemented by IR professionals of South Africa. In addition, the findings show that such characterised IR policies advances the rules of investor stakeholder relationship building and engagement. However, it remains unclear from a South African standpoint whether IR professionals are ready to engage in an open dialogue with investor stakeholders using social media. The findings show that IR in South Africa has trascended into a synergy era where two-way symmetrical communication is emphasised. It further shows that the theoretical frame of the study as derived from public relations Excellence theory and the two-way symmetrical communication (Grunig and Hunt, 1984) has positive implications in the investor relations efforts of building relationships and information disclosure. However, investor stakeholder preferences of engaging with IR professionals require further exploration. This will assist in theorising communication strategies ideal for IR practice.

No description available.

This paper will discuss the role that corporate governance can play in promoting sustainable development. Sustainable development is discussed in relation to three things: • Current development which does not result in the damage and destruction of the environment to the detriment of future inhabitants of this planet. This paper will discuss the role that corporate governance can play in promoting sustainable development. Sustainable development is discussed in relation to three things: • Current development which does not result in the damage and destruction of the environment to the detriment of future inhabitants of this planet.

This thesis considers the impact of taxation on two problems in the theory of financial markets. The first paper deals with the optimal choice of debt made by value-maximising firms. We consider a one-period world with personal and corporate taxation and distinguish between the repayment of principal and the payment of interest on corporate debt. It is shown that at optimum, a value-maximising firm may choose to issue multiple debt contracts with differing seniorities. In addition, the impact of a change in the tax rates (corporate or personal) on the optimum level of debt is seen to be ambiguous. Unambiguous statements can, however, be made about the impact of a change in the corporate tax rate on firm value, the value of the equity and on the required rate of return on risky corporate debt. The analysis borrows heavily on a framework that we develop early in the paper which permits us to visualise the value-maximising firm's choice of an optimal capital structure, graphically. The second essay examines the impact that taxes have on the pricing of call options on corporate stock. It is demonstrated that the process of replication can be influenced by the basis of the stocks used for the replication process as a result of the capital gains taxes involved. Consequently, the equilibrium price for an option is some average of the various costs of replication that different investors face. We find that the equilibrium price for the option can be influenced by investor preferences and by the history of the stock price. The empirical findings of an apparently unpredictable strike-price bias that have been observed in the past literature is examined and duplicated numerically. In addition, one explanation is given for the rationale behind covered option positions that consist of an option position and the corresponding hedge. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

The central objective of this interdisciplinary thesis is to articulate a theoretical, doctrinal and political justification for the reintroduction of corporate charter revocation as a remedy to enhance the accountability of corporations in modern society. Corporations were originally conceived of as public institutions granted charters to carry out specific activities in the interests of society. Where a corporation acted outside of its charter, the corporation's charter could be revoked. Over the past 150 years, corporate lawyers have silently amended corporate laws to provide corporations with rights, powers and privileges that exceed those of individuals. Internal institutional regulation through corporate charters has been replaced by external oversight through administrative regulatory mechanisms. Where incorporation was once considered a privilege, today it is a right. Despite these developments, this thesis argues that theory and doctrine still support the paramountcy of the public over the private, and the legal remedies of corporate charter revocation. The thesis contains six chapters including introduction and conclusion. Chapter one introduces the legal principle of corporate charter revocation and demonstrates why such a remedy is necessary in the context of modern corporate law. Chapter two considers the four accepted theories of the corporate structure and asserts that a revised "neo-concessionist" approach continues to inform our understanding of the corporation/state relationship. Chapter three reinforces this theoretical analysis through an historical and doctrinal account of the prerogative remedies of scire facias and quo warranto and the development of statutory charter revocation provisions. Chapter four focuses on the place of the state, specifically the Attorney General, in initiating revocation proceedings and some of the political barriers to reinstating the remedy. Through the exploration of these barriers and consideration of several recent American case studies, an effort is made to develop a strategy for the successful implementation of corporate charter revocation. The paper concludes with some thoughts about various outstanding barriers to the successful utilization of the remedy, the nature and application of corporate charter revocation generally, and calls for a continuation of a broader debate about the place of the corporation in modern society. / Law, Peter A. Allard School of / Graduate

Multinational corporations face the dilemma of global integration and local responsiveness. Further, they have to contend with trying to minimise agency costs in managing remote subsidiaries. An alternative to regional headquarters was proposed in regional management mandated (RMM) subsidiaries. These subsidiaries are profit and loss units that are delegated headquarters functions to manage peripheral subsidiaries. The study aimed to examine the headquarters-RMM-subsidiary structure through determining whether the RMM-subsidiary was relevant to a multi-business subsidiary with four industry sectors and examining the roles played by the business units within the industry sectors. A qualitative and single-case, exploratory study was conducted, which consisted of twenty-five semi-structured interviews with respondents within the headquarters, the RMM-subsidiary and the peripheral subsidiaries. This research found that the RMM-subsidiary does perform most of the headquarters’ functions for the peripheral subsidiaries and business partners – the performance of which is impacted by the type of business and the channel to market. The performance of these functions further highlighted that each business unit within an industry with the RMM charter plays multiple roles to varying degrees within a given framework and across multiple frameworks, and that the roles are also impacted by type of business and channel to market, local resources and competencies. Peripheral subsidiaries were highlighted as being unimportant, compromising their local responsiveness; however, it was indicated that potentially their role would change as business opportunities dictated. Finally, the deployment of expatriates seems not for purposes of control but to fill resource, knowledge and skill gaps as necessary. This highlighted an alternative to expatriate deployment – the development of staff at the headquarters. This would serve two purposes: equip the individual with knowledge and skills needed in the home country and develop networking and trusting relationships that were found to foster better working ties between the headquarters and subsidiaries. As a result the key components in the HQ-RMM-subsidiary structure are identified as the balance between control and autonomy, RMM-subsidiary roles and networking and trusting relationships, as all three components have a direct bearing on the MNC achieving global integration and local responsiveness. Keywords: headquarters functions, regional management mandated subsidiary, peripheral subsidiary, multi-business multinational corporation, subsidiary roles / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / zkgibs2015 / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / MBA / Unrestricted

This dissertation comprises three essays in the field of empirical corporate finance and it contributes to the literature on the financial and real effects of corporate governance. Broadly defined, corporate governance encompasses all mechanisms that remove frictions in the relationship between firm insiders and outside stakeholders with claims on the cash flows of the company. The field has focused on the relationships between concentrated equity-holders and managers, but there are many other firm claimants. I consider two that are understudied: (1) The government, which holds a claim on firm cash flows through its taxation power. This stake motivates the government to detect and punish manager expropriation. And (2) passive investors, which appear not to engage with the running of individual firms in their maximally diversified portfolios but which may have a portfolio-maximization incentive to do so. In the first two chapters I hypothesize that credible government monitoring creates firm value by reducing frictions between firms and their bank lenders, allowing them to access more and cheaper financing to fund new investments. I quantify the effect in the context of a tax audit program in Ecuador wherein a sub-group of firms were chosen to be audited every year indefinitely. In the first chapter, I show that banks lend more to firms that are known to be under higher government scrutiny, both on the intensive and extensive margins, and do so at lower interest rates and longer maturities. I control for selection bias using a regression discontinuity design based on the procedure the tax authority used to choose which firms to add to the auditing program. In the second chapter, I use the same Ecuadorian setting as in the first chapter to show that government monitoring affects the real economy: Firms subject to more government monitoring increase their employment and their investment in physical capital. This is true even though the firms increase their average tax payments. The estimated employment effects jointly estimate new employment and formalization of existing employees. Investment effects are concentrated in physical capital investments, rather than in intangibles. But what mechanism is driving these results? I determine that the financial and real effects act primarily through government monitoring reducing ``hidden action'' frictions between firms and their lenders. The corporate governance effects of tax enforcement are valuable to firm investors, which update their beliefs on firms' abilities to divert firm resources going forward, making firm actions more predictable under the monitoring regime. The combination of a larger supply of bank credit at a lower price supports this mechanism. Moreover, monitored firms became more likely to borrow from a bank that they had never borrowed from before and to attract investments from new private investors. Finally, it is those firms that appear to be most likely to divert ex ante, by both tax and accounting measures of diversion, that receive the largest decrease in their cost of borrowing once they are chosen for the program. I conclude that this government monitoring, even when it was designed to maximize tax collection, had a meaningful effect on firm access to capital and on the real economy. This evidence supports the hypothesis that predictable government enforcement of laws is an important part of a comprehensive corporate governance system, lowering frictions that are not mitigated through other means and complimenting other mechanisms, such as bank monitoring. The policy implication is that an increase in tax enforcement can benefit both the government and outside firm stakeholders by generating greater tax revenue and increasing the value of the firm to outsiders. In the third chapter I test the hypothesis that shareholder governance, the primary mechanism for inducing managers to maximize own-firm value, may in some circumstances lower manager incentives to maximize the value of their firm when to do so they would need to engage in fierce competition with other firms that their shareholders also own. One way that cross-holding shareholders could incentivize managers to internalize their competition preferences is to influence the composition of executive compensation by increasing the payouts to managers when their industry does well relative to the payouts when their own firm does well. I find no robust relationship between the cross-holdings of minority shareholders and the competition incentives embedded in the compensation of top firm executives. Rather, I find that firms with shareholders that hold relatively more cross-holdings in direct competitor firms are more likely to adopt performance pay that expressly rewards out-performing peers. This chapter contributes to the current policy debate on how to regulate diversified investors by casting doubt on the anti-competitive effects of these holdings, at least through the mechanism of executive compensation, the main way that firms align shareholder and executive incentives.

MASTER OF MANAGEMENT IN FINANCE & INVESTMENT (MMFI) 2015 RESEARCH REPORT / This paper assesses shareholder wealth creation in target and acquiring companies as a result of an acquisition, in particular, a hostile takeover. The paper reviews existing mergers and acquisitions literature and also considers a case study in order to review some practical results. The case study of the Bidvest Group hostile takeover of Adcock Ingram Pharmaceuticals that took place in January 2014 in South Africa is reviewed. A detailed qualitative and quantitative analysis is conducted to ascertain and quantify shareholder wealth creation after the takeover. The analysis conducted included a financial assessment using relevant financial indicators, an analysis of existing literature and interviews with key board directors of Adcock Ingram Pharmaceuticals. To ascertain whether the results of the target company, Adcock Ingram Pharmaceuticals, are either in line, below or above industry performance after the takeover, Adcock Ingram Pharmaceuticals’ results are benchmarked against Aspen Pharmacare Holding’s results. Majority of the findings literature reviewed are that target company shareholder gains exceed acquiring company shareholder gains post an acquisition. The findings of this research are that target company (Adcock Ingram Pharmaceuticals) shareholders are worse off whilst acquiring company (Bidvest Group) shareholders continue to increase their wealth after the takeover. Possible reasons for these results, which contradict majority of the existing literature on wealth gains post a merger or acquisition, are given.

No description available.

Thesis (MBA)--Stellenbosch University, 2009. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The purpose of this report is to establish whether a statistically significant relationship exists between a company's profitability and its working capital management. Profitability is measured by the return on assets, return on equities and Tobin's q ratio - the dependent variables in the report. Working capital management is assessed by inventory period, receivable period, payable period, operating cycle, cash conversion cycle and operating cash flow to total assets ratio - the independent variables in the report. Other independent variables applied are leverage and real gross domestic product growth rate. The report used a sample of working capital intensive companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange for the period of 1995-2005. These companies are divided into four sub-samples based on their working capital intensiveness. Companies with a ratio of current assets to total assets ranging from 0% to 24,99%, and from 25,00% to 49,99% are regarded as less working capital intensive. Companies with a ratio of current assets to total assets ratio ranging from 50,00% to 74.99%, and from 75,00% to 100.00% are considered high working capital intensive. The results of this research reveal that there is a positive statistically significant relationship between profitability and operating cash flow to total assets ratio. Therefore, companies with positive operating cash flow figures are likely to be profitable. The results exhibit a negative relationship between profitability and leverage. This is an indication that in order to increase its profitability, a company needs to reduce its debt ratio and keep it within the optimum capital structure level. The relationship between profitability and other independent variables is not consistent, indicating variation in working capital policies across industries. There is also a positive relationship between profitability and real GDP growth rate, although this is reflected during 2000 only. This indicates that companies' profitability is influenced by the overall economic performance. The report further evaluates whether less working capital intensive companies are more profitable as compared to high working capital intensive companies. Evidence shows that there is no difference in the profitability of less working capital intensive companies and high working capital intensive companies. However, there is confirmation that less working capital intensive companies have a high Tobin's q ratio as compared to high working capital intensive companies. This means that the percentage difference between the market value and assets is higher for less working capital intensive companies as compared to that of high working capital intensive companies. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die doel van hierdie verslag is om vas te stel of 'n statisties betekenisvolle verhouding tussen die winsgewendheid en die bedryfskapitaal bestuur van 'n maatskappy bestaan. Winsgewendheid word gemeet aan die opbrengs op bates, opbrengs op aandeelhouersbelang en Tobin se q-verhouding - die afhanklike veranderlikes in die verslag. Bedryfskapitaal bestuur word gemeet deur voorraadperiode, debiteursperiode, krediteursperiode, operasionele siklus, kontantomsettingsilkus en kontantvloei uit bedryfsaktiwiteite tot totale bates-verhouding - die onafhanklike veranderlikes in die verslag - te bepaal. Ander onafhanklike veranderlikes aangewend is skuldkapitaal verhouding en groei-tempo van die reele binnelandse produk. Die verslag het gebruik gemaak van 'n seleksie van bedryfskapitaal intensiewe maatskappye wat op die Johannesburgse Aandelebeurs genoteer was vir die tydperk 1995-2005. Hierdie maatskappye is in vier sub-groepe verdeel volgens bedryfskapitaal intensiwiteit. Maatskappye met 'n verhouding van bedryfsbates tot totale bates tussen 0% en 24,99%. en 25,00% tot 49,99% word as minder bedryfskapitaal intensief beskou, terwyl maatskappye waar hierdie verhouding tussen 50,00% en 74,99%, en 75,00% en 100,00% Iê as hoogs bedryfskapitaal intensief beskou word. Die resultate van hierdie navorsing dui op 'n statisties betekenisvolle verhouding- tussen winsgewendheid en die verhouding van kontantvloei uit bedryfsaktiwiteite tot fatale bates. Dus is maatskappye met positiewe kontantvloei-syfers uit bedryfsaktiwiteite waarskynlik winsgewend. Die resultate dui op 'n negatiewe verhouding tussen winsgewendheid en skuldkapitaal-verhouding, wat daarop dui dat 'n maatskappy die skuld-verhouding moet verminder en binne die optimale kapitaalstruktuur vlak te bly om winsgewendheid te vcrbeter. Die verhouding tussen winsgewendheid en ander onafhanklike veranderlikes is nie konstant nie, wat op beleidsverskille dui ten opsigte van bedryfskapitaal tussen verskillende nywerhede. Daar is 'n positiewe verhouding tussen winsgewendheid en groei in reele binnelandse produk, selfs al word hierdie verhouding slegs gedurende 2000 gesien. Dit dui daarop dat die winsgewendheid van maatskappye beinvloed word deur die algehele ekonomiese toestand. Die navorsing ondersoek verder of minder bedryfskapitaal intensiewe maatskappye meer winsgewend is as meer bedryfskapitaal intensiewe maatskappye. Resultate dui geen verskil tussen die winsgewendheid van minder bedryfskapitaal intensiewe maatskappye en meer bedryfskapitaal intensiewe maatskappye aan nie, maar bevestig wel dat minder bedryfskapitaal intensiewe maatskappye 'n hoër Tobin se q-verhouding toon. Dit beteken dat die persentasie verskil tussen markwaarde en totale bates hoër is vir minder bedryfskapitaal intensiewe maatskappye as vir meer bedryfskapitaal intensiewe maatdkappye.