Does the market understand the ex ante risk of expropriation by controlling shareholders?

Yan-Leung Cheung, P. Raghavendra Rau*, Aris Stouraitis, Weiqiang Tan

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

    10 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    We examine how the market values operating assets in the presence of time-varying ex ante risk that these assets may be tunneled away. We analyze pairs of Chinese publicly listed firms and their non-listed parents and examine the market valuation of current assets (cash balances, trade receivables, receivables due from the controlling shareholders, inventories) and fixed assets on the publicly listed firm's balance sheet. Our results show that in periods when the risk of tunneling from the publicly listed firm to its controlling shareholder increases, operating assets that are easy to tunnel (cash and receivables due from the controlling shareholder) are valued at larger discounts, while operating assets that are not easy to tunnel (trade receivables, inventories, fixed assets) are not valued at such discounts.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article number101946
    Number of pages22
    JournalJournal of Corporate Finance
    Volume68
    Early online date20 Apr 2021
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Jun 2021

    Scopus Subject Areas

    • Business and International Management
    • Finance
    • Economics and Econometrics
    • Strategy and Management

    User-Defined Keywords

    • Cash holdings
    • Expropriation
    • International corporate governance
    • Intra-group loans
    • Operating assets
    • Pyramids
    • Tunneling

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