The financial crisis that started in 2008 led to issues of corporate financial distress and bankruptcy. The global financial crisis has resulted in many venerable institutions being rescued by the government. There is an ongoing research debate in law and economic theories about the efficiency of the US bankruptcy code (Senbet and Wang, 2012; Jory and Madura, 2010; Zhang, 2010; Faelten and Vitkova, 2014). Due to the global financial crisis, there is a fundamental issue questioning whether the bankruptcy law (e.g., Chapters 11 and 7 of the US Bankruptcy Code) is efficient in rehabilitating economically efficient but financially distressed firms and liquidating economically inefficient firms (Senbet and Wang, 2012). Mergers and acquisition (hereafter M&A) involving financially distressed targets and bankrupt targets have become a common practise in the US. Theoretically, restructuring is meant to be a way of reorganizing operations and generating extra resources. However, due to the complexity of businesses and recent global financial crises, there is inconsistency in the association of rewards for Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and management with the firm's performance. This thesis explores the issues about corporate restructuring, performance and governance of firms including banks in the US emanated from the economic crisis. It comprises three empirical pieces of research. The first empirical research is on the wealth creation of bidders and of M&As of financial distressed and bankrupt targets. Our second research is about the earnings management behaviour of managers. Of those that were involved in the restructuring and reorganization of an organization. It is especially related to carve-out, sell-off, spin-off and other types of divestitures. Our third essay is on bank efficiency; taking into consideration the importance and crucial and urgency in the research related areas, such as the pay structure of the top management, and the existence of the internal monitoring. Institutional ownership plays an important role in corporate performance of firms particularly to banks in the US. First, we examine the wealth effects of M&A activities involving financially constrained targets (hereafter FCTs). By interrogating the wealth creation of bidders of these target firms, this study extends the analysis on the relationship between the discount on deal value, and the financial health of bidder firms. Based on sample data between 1985 and 2012, the study finds that bidders of FCTs earn abnormally positive cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) the day of the M&A announcement. This contrasts with the findings of negative to zero CARs accruing to bidders of financially healthy targets, as documented in the literature. The bidder firms benefit from a low M&A premium on these deals. However, in the long run, both their stock and operating performance lag those of bidders of healthy targets. Second, we examine the earnings management (hereafter EM) behaviour of firms engaged in corporate reorganization and restructuring. More specifically, our sample includes carve-outs, spin-offs, asset sell-offs, and divestitures. We follow Anagnostopoulou and Tsekrekos (2015) and Cohen and Zarowin (2010) to calculate the EM variables. This is so especially the accrual-based and real EM variables. To measure firm performance, we use industry-adjusted return on assets (ROA), cumulative abnormal returns (CARs), and Buy-and-Hold Abnormal Return (BHARs). We use the standard deviation of monthly stock returns (SDAR), as the proxy to measure the stock volatility and information asymmetry. We document a direct relationship between firms that manage earnings above the industry-year median EM index, and changes in the ROA, CARs, and BHARs. Conversely, firms that manage their earnings EM are associated with lower standard deviations in the firms' stock returns for carve-outs. Finally, we examine the relationship between the CEO's pay (CPS) and each of the bank's efficiency and risk. We use several measures of CEO pay including the ratio of CEO pay-to-the total pay of the top five managers. The ratio of CEO pay to the total pay of executives who also serve on the firm's board. We use the Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) to measure bank efficiency. To measure firm risk, we compute the Z-Score and standard deviation of daily and annual returns. We document an inverse relationship between CEO pay ratio and bank efficiency. Conversely, high pay disparity is associated with lower insolvency risk, lower Z-scores, and lower standard deviations in the banks' stock returns.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:731216 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Mohamad, Maslinawati |
| Publisher | University of Sussex |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/71251/ |
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