University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Business. / Recent regulatory changes in developed economies have sought to apply uniform standards for corporate governance following a series of high profile corporate collapses between 2000 and 2002. The various regulatory responses raised questions in the governance literature on the appropriateness of a “one size fits all” approach. However, empirical outcomes in this literature do not provide a consistent picture on how, or even whether, governance choices vary with firm characteristics. This thesis addresses the lack in empirical direction by investigating the discriminatory power of a fundamental firm variable, the price-to-book ratio (P/B), that is often applied in Australian and other studies to predict governance outcomes. It evaluates how a joint price-to-book, price-to- earnings, firm classification (P/B, P/E) captures variations in governance choices by Australian firms and compares the results with those using a conventional P/B classification. Choices for two key mechanisms – the level of independence of the board of directors and the quality of its external auditors, are examined as they feature prominently in regulatory reforms. The results show that a joint P/B, P/E classification captures significant differences in the use of both mechanisms confirming that governance frameworks vary with firm characteristics. Consistent with expectations, these differences are recorded for board independence within high and within low P/B firms. Significant variations are also identified in the choice of auditor quality within both P/B classes of firms. By enabling a more parsimonious analysis of firm characteristics through the joint P/B, P/E framework, these results enhance our understanding of the choice of independent directors and high quality auditors. They also lend support to the general proposition that a “one size fits all” governance framework could lead to unnecessary costs for firms as they seek optimal governance arrangements that suit their specific information environments.

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Business. / Recent regulatory changes in developed economies have sought to apply uniform standards for corporate governance following a series of high profile corporate collapses between 2000 and 2002. The various regulatory responses raised questions in the governance literature on the appropriateness of a “one size fits all” approach. However, empirical outcomes in this literature do not provide a consistent picture on how, or even whether, governance choices vary with firm characteristics. This thesis addresses the lack in empirical direction by investigating the discriminatory power of a fundamental firm variable, the price-to-book ratio (P/B), that is often applied in Australian and other studies to predict governance outcomes. It evaluates how a joint price-to-book, price-to- earnings, firm classification (P/B, P/E) captures variations in governance choices by Australian firms and compares the results with those using a conventional P/B classification. Choices for two key mechanisms – the level of independence of the board of directors and the quality of its external auditors, are examined as they feature prominently in regulatory reforms. The results show that a joint P/B, P/E classification captures significant differences in the use of both mechanisms confirming that governance frameworks vary with firm characteristics. Consistent with expectations, these differences are recorded for board independence within high and within low P/B firms. Significant variations are also identified in the choice of auditor quality within both P/B classes of firms. By enabling a more parsimonious analysis of firm characteristics through the joint P/B, P/E framework, these results enhance our understanding of the choice of independent directors and high quality auditors. They also lend support to the general proposition that a “one size fits all” governance framework could lead to unnecessary costs for firms as they seek optimal governance arrangements that suit their specific information environments.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the relationship of all corporate governance indicators with firm performance (proxied by price to book value) and tax fees. Using a sample of 133 large U.S firms, in a single model, we explore the correlation of price to book value with board of director's structure (composition and size). Our results show that smaller and younger boards with less independent directors lead to a higher firm performance. We further find that presence of women on board is important rather than their number. The outcome of the study shows also that financial expertise of audit committee members has a significant and positive influence on the amount of tax fees. Overall, the results suggest that board characteristics are important and they influence firm performance. Keywords: board of directors, firm performance, price to book value, governance indicators, tax fees.

As the existence of value premium has been showed in previous studies, this paper focuses on studying strategies for capitalizing this value premium in Swedish stock market. This paper studies the possible gains and risks of value investing strategies constructed with dividend yield, price-to-earnings (P/E) and price-to-book (P/B) ratios in Swedish stock market during 2006-2016.The findings show that the studied value portfolios offered abnormal returns during the studied time-period. Moreover, value stocks performed better than growth stocks when dividend yield and P/B-ratio were used as criteria. However, the paper could not confirm the same effect in P/E-ratio as high P/E tended to work better than low P/E. Out of the studied ratios, the best risk-adjusted returns were received from companies with the lowest P/B-ratios.The findings in this paper also indicate that including more ratio-based criteria in to an investment strategy does not offer more risk-adjusted returns.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-15T19:30:55Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Carlo Marcelo Lauretti.pdf: 1186188 bytes, checksum: ef5b16f19a8df5ffbb1aa67a49379ec3 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-02-06 / Fundo Mackenzie de Pesquisa / The index obtained by dividing the equity book value by market value (book-to-market) is found in corporate finance studies to capture performance perspectives that are not present in financial statements. These studies find a negative relation between it and the future financial performance measured by return on assets and a positive relation with market performance measured by return to shareholders, even if the expected return to shareholders is adjusted for non-systematic risk measured by Beta. This research attempts to show that book-to-market value can be characterized as a proxy for companies idiosyncratic intangible assets, and these resources provide sustainable financial performance. The sustainability of financial performance may explain this positive relation between book-to-market value and return to shareholders that are found in these studies, as investors would accept a lower risk premium offered by intangible-intensive companies. If we accept market efficiency hypothesis, by which prices capture all publicly or not available information affecting the value of companies, then intangible-intensive firms present lower risk. This research also brings the discussion that if it is the companies idiosyncratic intangible assets that promote sustainable financial performance then a measure of the construct of intangibility has greater explanatory power for the observed financial and market performance. Strategic resource literature proposes Tobin's Q as an intangibility construct metric. This study shows that the use of Tobin's Q allows the construction of a better performance estimator then book-to-market value, thus confirming that it is intangible assets that offers the best explanation for the companies financial and market performance. This study finds a strong positive relation between intangibility and sustainable financial performance and a negative relation with market performance. / O índice obtido pela divisão do valor contábil pelo valor de mercado do patrimônio líquido (Book-to-Market) é encontrado em estudos de finanças corporativas para capturar perspectivas de desempenho que não estão presentes nos demonstrativos contábeis. Estes estudos notam relações negativas entre ele e o futuro desempenho financeiro mensurado pelo retorno sobre os ativos, porém positivas com o desempenho de mercado mensurado pelo retorno para o acionista, mesmo que o retorno esperado para o acionista seja ajustado pelo risco não sistemático mensurado pelo Beta. O presente estudo procura mostrar que o índice Book-to-Market pode ser caracterizado como uma proxy para os recursos intangíveis idiossincráticos das empresas, e são estes recursos que proporcionam desempenho financeiro sustentável para as empresas. A sustentabilidade do desempenho financeiro pode explicar esta relação positiva entre o índice Book-to-Market com o retorno para os acionistas, já que os investidores estariam dispostos a aceitar um menor prêmio de risco oferecido por empresas intangível-intensivas. Se admitirmos a hipótese de eficiência de mercado, na qual os preços capturam todas as informações disponíveis publicamente ou não que afetem o valor das empresas, então as empresas intangível-intensivas apresentam menor risco. A presente pesquisa traz ainda a discussão de que sendo os ativos intangíveis idiossincráticos das empresas o que promoveria o desempenho financeiro sustentável, então uma métrica do constructo de intangibilidade teria maior poder explicativo para o observado desempenho financeiro e de mercado do que o Book-to-Market. A literatura de recursos estratégicos propõe como métrica do constructo de intangibilidade o índice Q de Tobin. Este estudo mostra que a utilização do índice Q de Tobin permite a construção de melhores estimadores de desempenho que o Book-to-Market, corroborando assim que é a intangibilidade que oferece melhores explicações para o desempenho financeiro e de mercado das empresas. Este estudo encontra uma forte relação positiva entre intangibilidade e desempenho financeiro sustentável e negativa com o desempenho de mercado.

The purpose of our study was to examine the relationship between the volatility of price multiples and the volatility of stock prices in the Swedish market from 2003 to 2012. Our focus was on the price-to-earnings ratio and the price-to-book ratio. Some previous studies showed a link between the price multiples and the volatility of stock prices, this made us question whether there should be a link between the volatility of the price multiples and the volatility of the stock prices. The importance of this subject is accentuated by the financial crisis, as we provide investors with information regarding the movements of price multiples and stock prices. Moreover, we test if the volatility of the price multiples can be used to create a prediction model for the volatility of stock prices. Also we fill the gap in the previous researches as there is no previous literature about this topic. We conducted a quantitative research using statistical tests, such as the correlation test and the linear regression test. For our data sample we chose the Sweden Datastream index. We first calculated the volatility using the GARCH model and then continued with our statistical tests. The results of our tests showed that there is a relationship between the volatility of the price multiples and the volatility of the stock prices in the Swedish market in the past ten years. Our findings show that the correlation coefficients vary across industries and over time in both strength and direction. The second part of our tests is concerned with the linear regression tests, mainly calculating the coefficient of determination. Our results show that the volatility of the price multiples do explain changes in the volatility of stock prices. Thus, the volatility of the P/E ratio and the volatility of the P/B ratio can be used in creating a prediction model for the volatility of stock prices. Nevertheless, we also find that this model is best suited when the economic situation is unstable (i.e. crisis, bad economic outlook) as both the correlation coefficient and the coefficient of determination had the highest values in the last five years, with the peak in 2008.

This Master Thesis deals with the usability of fundamental indicators for building a stock portfolio regarding chosen equities from the Prague Stock Exchange. The output of the work is finding that stocks with the lowest values of price to earnings ratio and price to book ratio make higher return than stocks with the highest values of these indicators. These stocks exceed latter with taking lower risk based on standard deviation of returns. The usability of indicators was confirmed by these findings. Another conclusion of this Thesis is finding that stocks with the lowest values of these indicators exceeded benchmark represented by PX-TR index.

企業價值受到資本市場的眾多投資人、公司股東或企業管理階層等等的高度矚目。企業價值評價的方法眾多，最理想之狀況是根據企業相關資訊而計算出的實質價值。然而實質價值難以估計，遂以市價(亦即股票價格或股價乘以發行股數)做為實質價值之代理變數。然而，考量不同公司，其發行在外股數多寡不一，為消除公司規模問題，本研究根據Ohlson(1995)提出之模型加以延伸，以市價/帳面價值比作為企業價值之衡量指標。 然而，企業價值究竟受到哪些因素影響呢？過去研究多偏向探討財務資訊與企業價值間之關係，一直到近期始開始注意到非財務性資訊對企業價值之影響。但仍缺少一個完整的邏輯結構，Kaplan and Norton(1992)提出的平衡計分卡提供了一個全面性整合的架構去評估組織之績效，以嚴謹的邏輯關係將財務與非財務層面之因素加以連結，透過計分卡的四個構面：財務、顧客、內部流程及學習與成長的層層推演，幫助達成組織之策略目標。而企業策略目標之達成，對於企業價值應有正面助益，故本研究以平衡計分卡之架構，討論我國資訊電子業企業價值之影響因素，探討欲提升企業價值可從哪些因素著手。 本研究以複迴歸方式進行分析，研究結果顯示：（一）財務構面的營業毛利成長率與股東權益報酬率與企業價值間有顯著正相關；（二）顧客構面的顧客滿意度與企業價值間有顯著正向關係；（三）內部程序構面的研發強度與企業價值間有顯著正相關；（四）學習與成長構面的員工生產力與員工教育程度與企業價值間有顯著正向關係。建議我國資訊電子業欲提升自身之企業價值，可從上述各因素著手努力。 關鍵字：企業價值、市價/帳面價值比、平衡計分卡 / Valuation of the firms is a considerable issue for investors, stockholders, and managers. The valuation methods are numerous, the most ideal one is intrinsic value which is calculated on the firm’s related information, such as dividend policy, profitability and growth etc. However, it is difficult to calculate the intrinsic value. The related research always substitute market value (stock price or stock price*outstanding shares) for intrinsic value. Considering the firm scale, this research followed the Ohlson model (1995), and chose the price-to-book ratio (P/B ratio) as the measure of the firm value. Anyhow, what are the critical factors influencing firm value? Most past researches focused on the relationship between financial information and firm value. Currently, the influence of non-financial information factors begins being emphasized. Yet, it still lacks a set of complete logical structure. “Balanced scorecard”, presented by Kaplan and Norton (1992), provides an integrated enterprise performance evaluation system. This tool logically connects the financial and non-financial factors and divides all the influential factors into four different “scorecards”, including “finance”, “customer”, “internal process” and “learning and growth”, in order to help the organization achieve its strategic objectives. Furthermore, the achievement of strategic objectives is supposed to have positive effect on organizational performance. Therefore, this research explores the influential factors toward firm value, utilizing “balanced scorecard”, and probe which factors can clearly increase the firm value. The research target sample is the information technology industry in Taiwan. The statistical analysis method in this research is multiple regressions. The research results are as follows. 1. In the finance perspective, “gross profit growth rate” and “return of equity” positively affect the firm value. 2. In the customer perspective, “customer satisfaction rate” positively affects firm value. 3. In internal process perspective, “research and development (R&D) intensity” positively affects the firm value. 4. In learning and growth perspective, “employees productivity” and “employees education level” positively affect the firm value. Hence, this research suggests the information technology industry in Taiwan can aim at the concluded factors to increase its firm value. Key words：firm value, price-to-book ratio, balanced scorecard

本研究以1997至2001年國內高研發密度之上市上櫃公司為研究對象，探討高研發密度公司揭露非盈餘以及智慧資本相關資訊之行為。首先探討企業揭露資訊之偏好及趨勢，再分析影響企業揭露非盈餘及智慧資本資訊頻率之因素，並探討企業股價與帳面價值間之差異及股票週轉率與企業揭露智慧資本相關資訊之關聯性。 實證結果發現，公司主動揭露與盈餘有關資訊之頻率有逐年下滑的現象，而揭露非盈餘及智慧資本相關資訊的頻率則有逐漸升高的趨勢。以分組檢定結果而言，未預期盈餘為正且幅度較大的公司在揭露智慧資本資訊方面顯著較未預期盈餘為負且幅度較大的公司積極。就影響企業揭露非盈餘以及智慧資本相關資訊之因素而言，未預期盈餘、員工每人營業利益、研發密集度，以及每人配備率與揭露非盈餘及智慧資本相關資訊之次數均呈顯著正向關係，而董監事持股比率以及用人費用率則與兩項資訊之揭露次數呈顯著負相關。 此外，屬於資訊電子業以及規模較大的公司，揭露非盈餘及智慧資本相關資訊之意願較強。就企業股價與帳面價值之差異以及股票流動性而言，資訊電子業之股價淨值比及股票週轉率均較非資訊電子業為高，策略聯盟（流程資本）資訊揭露次數與股價淨值比呈顯著正（負）向關係，新產品及策略聯盟（人力資本）資訊揭露次數則與股票週轉率呈顯著正（負）相關。 關鍵字：自願性揭露、智慧資本、市價淨值比 / Based on a sample of firm listed on TSE, this thesis investigates the voluntary disclosure behavior ofR&D intensive companies in Taiwan over the period of 1997 to 2001. With an emphasis on non-earnings and intellectual capital-related disclosure policies, we first explore the disclosure behavior in terms of frequency and type of information revealed by management. We then examine whether price-to-book (P/B) ratio and stock turnover ratio reflect the disclosure of non-earnings and intellectual capital-related information. The empirical results suggest a declining trend in disclosing earnings information, with an opposite tendency in non-earnings information over the period examined. In addition, unexpected earnings and variables proxy for intellectual capital determine the disclosure behavior of non-earnings and intellectual capital-related information. Firms with operating performance far beyond market's expectation tend to disclose more intellectual capital-related information than firms with operating performances far worse than market has expected. Variables such as operating income per employee and cost of human resource (proxies for human capital), R&D intensity (proxy for innovation capital), equipment per employee (proxy for process capital) as well as the ratio of directors' shareholding are found to be significantly related to the disclosure frequency of non-earnings and intellectual capital-related information. The findings also indicate that electronics and software industries are more likely to disclose more non-earnings and intellectual capital-related information and have higher price-to-book and stock turnover ratios as compared to other industries in the sample. Firms disclose more (less) strategic alliance (process capital) information is found to have higher price-to-book ratios. Firms disclose more (less) strategic alliance and new product (human capital) information is found to have higher stock turnover ratio. It appears that more disclosure on intellectual capital-related information does not necessarily and monotonously explain the variation in both price-to-book and stock turnover ratios. Key words: voluntary disclosure, intellectual capital, price-to-book ratio, stock turnover ratio

This study discusses about the relationships between the qualities of collateralized shares by the broad of directors and the bank performance. In this study, we focus on the quantitative indicators of collateralized shares. Base on individual collateralization data, we build up the sets of the loans permitted by banks. In additon, this study is based on the multiple regression model to find out the relationships between the qualities of the collateral loans and the bank performance. By the conclusion, this study tries to give some advice to the banks about measuring the loans with collateralized shares. There are few conclusion of this study: 1. The stocks with higher price volatility are not good collaterals. The banks which have the loan with the collaterals with higher price volatility usually have bad proformance. The banks should pay attension to this indicator. 2. The collaterals are better with high ¡¥market price-to-book value¡¦. 3. By literature review, the higher proportion of collateralized shares by the broad of directors, the shares seem to be the worse collaterals for the banks. However, in this study, we find out some trade-off relationship between the profit and the risk in measuring this indicator.