• Title/Summary/Keyword: financial leverage

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Fraud Scenario Prevalent in the Banking Sector: Experience of a Developing Country

  • Bhasin, Madan Lal
    • East Asian Journal of Business Economics (EAJBE)
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    • v.4 no.4
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    • pp.8-20
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    • 2016
  • Banks are the engines that drive the operations in financial sector, money markets and growth of economy. With growing banking industry in India, frauds in Banks are increasing and fraudsters are becoming more sophisticated and ingenious. Shockingly, banking industry in India dubs rising fraud as "an inevitable cost of doing business." As part of study, a questionnaire-based survey was conducted in 2012-13 among 345 Bank employees "to know their perception towards bank frauds and evaluate factors that influence the degree of their compliance level." The study reveals, "there are poor employment practices and lack of effective employee training; usually over-burdened staff, weak internal control systems, and low compliance levels on the part of Bank Managers, Offices and Clerks. Although banks cannot be 100% secure against unknown threats, a certain level of preparedness can go a long way in countering fraud risk. Internal audit professionals should play an integral role in organization's fraud-fighting efforts. Some other promising steps are: educate customers about fraud prevention, make application of laws more stringent, leverage the power of data analysis technologies, follow fraud mitigation best practices, and employ multipoint scrutiny.

The Relationship Between Family Ownership, CEO Demographic Characteristics and Dividend Policy: Evidence from Indonesia

  • MADYAN, Muhammad;SETIAWAN, Wulan Rahmadani;SETIANTO, Rahmat Heru;AL-ISLAMI, Moch. Ali Fudin;SHIDIQ, Hasbi Ash
    • The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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    • v.8 no.12
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    • pp.159-167
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    • 2021
  • The objective of this study is to examine the effect of family ownership and family CEO on the dividend policy of family firms by using the demographic characteristics of the CEO as a moderator. Dividend policy is a decision taken by the firm in determining whether the profits earned by the firm will be distributed to shareholders in the form of dividends or will be reinvested in the company as retained earnings for future internal resources. Using samples from non-financial family firms listed on the Indonesian Stock Exchange in 2013-2017, 93 firms were selected based on adequate data. We also used logit regressions to provide robustness. The results show that family ownership and family CEO have a positive effect on the dividend payout ratio. This finding supports the family income hypothesis. Among CEO demographic characters, CEO age significantly strengthens the positive effect of family CEO on dividend payout ratio. While CEO tenure does not significantly strengthen the positive effect of family CEOs on dividend payout ratios. Meanwhile, leverage, ROA, and firm size significantly affect the dividend payout ratio, but firm age does not significantly affect the dividend payout ratio.

Optimal Capital Structure of Listed Firms - A Structural Approach: Evidence from Vietnam

  • NGUYEN, Anh Thi Van;DAO, Binh Thi Thanh
    • The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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    • v.8 no.11
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    • pp.213-221
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    • 2021
  • The paper attempts to investigate the optimal capital structure of Vietnamese listed firms based on a structural approach. Using the data from around 70 companies in the Consumer Staples sector listed on the Vietnamese Stock Exchange during the period 2018-2020, this study finds that the optimal capital structure of examined companies has a wide range of diversification. This can be explained by the various types of actual products for each typical firm within the chosen sector. The result also confirms that a large proportion of researched firms were actually overleveraged, which is consistent with the trade-off hypothesis that firms wish to take tax advantages while using more debt, which creates the benefits from tax-shield. Furthermore, the research highlights the reversed correlation, which suggests that the lower the company's risk (the lower the sigma of the assets), the greater the optimal capital structure is suggested. Another interesting finding is that almost all consumer staples companies have a better optimal capital structure under the Leland and Toft (1996) model than under the Leland (1994) model. Furthermore, there is a strong correlation of optimal financial leverage ratio between years. In other words, the optimal debt levels of the latter year are strongly dependent on the gearing levels of the previous years.

Factors Influencing Corporate Debt Maturity: An Empirical Study of Listed Companies in Vietnam

  • NGO, Van Toan;LE, Thi Lanh
    • The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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    • v.8 no.5
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    • pp.551-559
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    • 2021
  • The maturity structure of corporate debt is one of the significant financing choices that a firm must make simultaneously while deciding how to finance its operational and investment decisions. Even though the capital structure is one of the scrutinized topics of interest in the corporate finance literature, scarce studies have investigated corporate debt maturity, even less so in the context of emerging markets. The choice of a suitable debt maturity structure is exceptionally relevant for firms. It can enable them to avoid mismatch by aligning assets in line with liabilities, addressing agency-related problems, sidestep the ill effects of cost of capital, and signaling the firms' earning quality and value. The study investigates the firm-specific and macroeconomic determinants significant for the debt maturity structure of Vietnamese corporate firms. A sample of 722 non-financial firms listed on the Ho Chi Minh and Hanoi Stock Exchange in Vietnam from 2007 to 2018 was taken to test the hypothesis. The study's methods fixed effects panel data analysis provides empirical evidence that firm size, firms' quality, liquidity, leverage, asset maturity, tax impact, and macro variables are significantly related to the debt maturity structure.

Audit Quality and Stock Price Synchronicity: Evidence from Emerging Stock Markets

  • ALMAHARMEH, Mohammad I.;SHEHADEH, Ali A.;ISKANDRANI, Majd;SALEH, Mohammad H.
    • The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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    • v.8 no.3
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    • pp.833-843
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    • 2021
  • This research examines the impact of audit quality on the extent to which firm-specific information is integrated with a firm's share price - which is determined inversely using stock price synchronicity. The study sample consists of non-financial companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange i.e., the Jordanian Stock Market, from 2014-2018. After examining 810 firm-year observations from Jordanian industrial companies listed on the ASE, during the study period, we find that the companies using one of the BIG4 audit firms for auditing have less synchronous and more informative stock prices, suggesting high-quality audit improved governance and reduce information asymmetry between firms' insiders and investors which enhances the capitalization of firm's specific information into the stock price, thus less synchronous and more informative stock return. The findings remain consistent over 2 separate measurements of stock price synchronicity (Market and Industry model and Market Model) and show robustness for fixed effect tests. Our multivariate regression results are also robust after controlling for a number of features at the firm level with potential associations with stock price synchronicity. These include the firm size, leverage, return on assets (ROA), and market to book value (MBV).

Traffic Engineering with Segment Routing under Uncertain Failures

  • Zheng, Zengwei;Zhao, Chenwei;Zhang, Jianwei;Cai, Jianping
    • KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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    • v.15 no.7
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    • pp.2589-2609
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    • 2021
  • Segment routing (SR) is a highly implementable approach for traffic engineering (TE) with high flexibility, high scalability, and high stability, which can be established upon existing network infrastructure. Thus, when a network failure occurs, it can leverage the existing rerouting methods, such as rerouting based on Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP) and fast rerouting with loop-free alternates. To better exploit these features, we propose a high-performance and easy-to-deploy method SRUF (Segment Routing under Uncertain Failures). The method is inspired by the Value-at-Risk (VaR) theory in finance. Just as each investment risk is considered in financial investment, SRUF also considers each traffic distribution scheme's risk when forwarding traffic to achieve optimal traffic distribution. Specifically, SRUF takes into account that every link may fail and therefore has inherent robustness and high availability. Also, SRUF considers that a single link failure is a low-probability event; hence it can achieve high performance. We perform experiments on real topologies to validate the flexibility, high-availability, and load balancing of SRUF. The results show that when given an availability requirement, SRUF has greater load balancing performance under uncertain failures and that when given a demand requirement, SRUF can achieve higher availability.

The Impact of Corporate Governance on Firm Performance During The COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Malaysia

  • KHATIB, Saleh F.A.;NOUR, Abdul-Naser Ibrahim
    • The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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    • v.8 no.2
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    • pp.943-952
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    • 2021
  • The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effect of COVID-19 on corporate governance attributes and firm performance association. This research used a sample of 188 non-financial firms from the Malaysian market for the years 2019-2020. We found that the COVID-19 has affected all firm characteristics including firm performance, governance structure, dividend, liquidity, and leverage level, yet, the difference between prior and post COVID-19 pandemic is not significant. Also, the investigation revealed that board size exerts a significant positive impact on firm performance. After splitting the sample based on year, however, we found that board size does not matter in the uncertain time of the current crisis, while board diversity appeared to be significantly enhancing firm performance in the crisis time compared to the prior year where it has an inverse association with firm performance in both indicators. Board meetings and audit committee meetings seemed to have a significant negative influence on firm performance pre and post-COVID-19. This study contributes to the limited literature by providing the first empirical evidence on the impact of Coronavirus on the firm performance and corporate governance association.

The Impact of Foreign Ownership on Stock Price Volatility: Evidence from Thailand

  • THANATAWEE, Yordying
    • The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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    • v.8 no.1
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    • pp.7-14
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    • 2021
  • This paper examines the impact of foreign ownership on stock price volatility in an emerging market, namely, Thailand. The data were obtained from SETSMART, the database of the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET). After removing financial firms, banks, and insurance companies as well as filtering outliers, the final sample covers 1,755 firm-year observations from 371 nonfinancial firms listed on the SET over the five-year period from 2014 to 2018. The regression model consists of stock price volatility, measured by two methods, as the dependent variable, foreign ownership as the main independent variable, and firm characteristics including firm size, leverage, market-to book ratio, and stock turnover as the control variables. The pooled OLS, fixed effects, and random effects estimations are employed to examine the relationship between foreign ownership and stock price volatility. The results reveal that foreign ownership has a negative and significant impact on stock price volatility. The two-stage least squares (2SLS) are also performed to address potential endogeneity problem. The results still indicate a negative relationship between foreign ownership and stock price volatility. Taken together, the findings of this study suggest that foreign investors help reduce stock price volatility and thus stabilize share price in the Thai stock market.

Corporate Social Responsibility and Earnings Management: Evidence from Saudi Arabia after Mandatory IFRS Adoption

  • GARFATTA, Riadh
    • The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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    • v.8 no.9
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    • pp.189-199
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    • 2021
  • This study attempts to examine the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure and earnings management practices in the context of Saudi Arabia after mandatory IFRS adoption. It is carried out on an unbalanced panel of 277 observations over the period 2017-2019. For this purpose, CSR disclosure is measured by Bloomberg ESG scores, while the residuals from the modified Jones model are considered for earnings management. As control variables, we have retained the firm performance, market-to-book ratio, firm size, financial leverage, board independence, ownership concentration, managerial ownership, and lagged discretionary accruals. Using the system GMM estimator in the dynamic panel, the results show a positive association between CSR disclosure and earnings management practices, thus supporting the perspective of agency theory. Managers engage in socially responsible activities beforehand to conceal their wrongdoing and convince stakeholders that the organization is transparent. They probably use ethical codes as a tool to achieve their own goals rather than the firm's goals. Our contribution is the use of recent data (2017-2019) taking into account the mandatory adoption of IFRS in Saudi Arabia. Additionally, to our knowledge, this study is the first to address CSR disclosure and earnings management practices using GMM system estimates.

Factors Affecting Accounting Policy Choice: Evidence from Small and Medium Enterprises in Vietnam

  • DOAN, Anh Thi Thuy;LE, Binh Thi Hai;LE, Nguyet Thi My;DANG, Ly Ai
    • The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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    • v.9 no.9
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    • pp.327-337
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    • 2022
  • The purpose of this study is to determine the direction and significance of variables influencing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) decisions regarding accounting policy in Vietnam. Research data was collected through a survey of 296 subjects, including chief accountants, accountants, managers, and lecturers with practical experience in accounting work at enterprises. With the help of specialized software SPSS, determining the impact of factors on the choice of accounting policy of enterprises is done through a multivariate regression model with control tools Cronbach's alpha determination, EFA factor analysis, and Pearson correlation analysis. Research results show that there are seven factors affecting the choice of accounting policy in Vietnamese SMEs; in which, the factors information technology, legal environment, information demand, manager's awareness, and accounting qualification have a positive impact; and two factors are tax pressure, and financial leverage have a negative impact on accounting policy choice. These results are consistent with most of the previously published studies. However, in contrast to many previous studies, our research shows that accounting's psychological factor does not affect the accounting policy choice. This is consistent with the characteristics of SMEs in Vietnam because the role of accountants is not appreciated in the business.