Readings for the Research Seminar 2006/7

financial policy and corporate governance OF Russian companies

 

General references

·        Rai course of corporate finance (lecture notes): http://www.rcw.raifoundation.org/course-mgt-mba-notes-corfin.htm

·        Tirole's book website http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/tirole/. The first chapter provides a nice overview of corporate governance issues.

·        Ñàéò Ôåäåðàëüíîé ñëóæáû ïî ôèíàíñîâûì ðûíêàì: http://www.fcsm.ru/

 

Corporate governance

Surveys:

·        Shleifer and Vishny, 1997, “A Survey of Corporate Governance”, Journal of Finance 52, 737-783.
The article surveys research on corporate governance with special attention to the importance of legal protection of investors and of ownership concentration around the world.

·        Becht, Bolton and Röell, 2002, "Corporate Governance and Control", ECGI - Finance Working Paper No. 02/2002. http://ssrn.com/abstract=343461.
The survey reviews the theoretical and empirical research on the mechanisms of corporate governance.

Papers:

·        Gompers, Ishii, and Metrick, 2003, Corporate governance and equity prices, Quarterly Journal of Economics 118, 107-155.
Based on the US data, the paper finds that firms with stronger shareholder rights has higher firm value, higher profits, higher sales growth, lower capital expenditures, and make fewer corporate acquisitions.

·        Durnev and Kim, 2005, “To Steal or Not to Steal: Firm Attributes, Legal Environment, and Valuation,” Journal of Finance 60, 1461-1493. http://people.mcgill.ca/files/artyom.durnev/steal.pdf
The paper looks at the determinants of corporate governance and its effect on the firm market value, using a sample of firms from 27, mostly non-OECD, countries.

·        Black, Love, and Rachinsky, 2005, “Corporate Governance and Firms' Market Values: Time Series Evidence from Russia”, CEFIR working paper, http://www.cefir.ru/download.php?id=276
The paper finds that Russian firms with better corporate governance practices are valued higher on the market. It also analyzes which exactly characteristics of corporate governance matter.

·        Guriev, Lazareva, Rachinsky, and Tsoukhlo, 2003, "Corporate Governance in Russian Industry", CEFIR Working Paper No 32. http://www.cefir.ru/download.php?id=71
The paper studies the determinants of corporate governance and investment in Russian non-listed companies.

Useful links:

·        http://www.nccg.ru/ Ñàéò íàöèîíàëüíîãî ñîâåòà ïî êîðïîðàòèâíîìó óïðàâëåíèþ. Çàêîíîäàòåëüñòâî, íîâîñòè, ðåéòèíãè, êîäåêñ êîðïîðàòèâíîãî ïîâåäåíèÿ, æóðíàë «Êîðïîðàòèâíîå óïðàâëåíèå»

·        http://www.standardandpoors.ru/ Ðîññèéñêèé ñàéò Standard & Poor’s. Ðåéòèíãè, àíàëèòè÷åñêèå îò÷åòû.

·        http://www.fcsm.ru/catalog.asp?ob_no=3604 Ðàçäåë ñàéòà ÔÑÔÐ, ïîñâÿùåííûé êîðïîðàòèâíîìó óïðàâëåíèþ.

 

Hostile takeovers

Surveys:

·        Burkart, Mike C. and Fausto Panunzi, 2006, "Takeovers", ECGI - Finance Working Paper No. 118/2006 http://ssrn.com/abstract=884080
This paper reviews the existing literature on takeovers.

Papers:

·        Grossman and Hart, 1980, "Takeover Bids, the Free Rider Problem and the Theory of the Corporation," Bell Journal of Economics 11, 42-64, available at JSTOR.
A classical paper on hostile takeovers, showing why it is difficult to take over a company with widely dispersed ownership even if the raider (a firm that attempts a takeover) is able to create higher value than the incumbent management.

·        Guriev, Lazareva, Rachinsky, and Tsukhlo, 2004, “Concentrated ownership, market for corporate control, and corporate governance”, http://www.nes.ru/~sguriev/CGRussia.pdf
The paper studies how a controlling owner of a firm can prevent a takeover through a proper choice of corporate governance. The authors find a support for their findings in the Russian data.

·        Bebchuk, 1999, “A Rent Protection Theory of Corporate Ownership and Control”, NBER Working Paper No. 7203, http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/bebchuk/pdfs/nber7203.99.pdf
The paper provides a rationale for why control of companies is concentrated in countries with weak legal protection of shareholders (like Russia). The key thing is that weak legal protection makes private benefits of control very valuable and induce controlling owners to concentrate control in order to prevent potential raiders from seizing it.

Useful links:

·        http://www.mergers.ru/publicism.html Ñòàòüè î ðîññèéñêèõ âðàæäåáíûõ ïîãëîùåíèÿõ («ðýéäåðñòâå»).

·        http://www.ma-journal.ru Ñàéò âåäóùåãî æóðíàëà î ñëèÿíèÿõ è ïîãëîùåíèÿõ â Ðîññèè. Åñòü ðàçäåëû è íîâîñòè, ïîñâÿùåííûå âðàæäåáíûì ïîãëîùåíèÿì è êîðïîðàòèâíûì êîíôëèêòàì.

·        http://www.zahvat.ru/ Ñàéò, öåëèêîì ïîñâÿùåííûé âðàæäåáíûì ïîãëîùåíèÿì â Ðîññèè.

 

IPOs

Surveys:

·        Ritter and Welch, 2002, "A Review of IPO Activity, Pricing and Allocations" Journal of Finance 57(4), 1795-1828.

·        Roell, 1996, “The decision to go public: An overview” European Economic Review 40, 1071-1081.

Papers:

·        Brau and Fawcett, 2006, “Initial Public Offerings: An Analysis of Theory and Practice,” Journal of Finance 61(1), 399-436.
Comparing practice and theory of IPOs based on survey of companies’ CFOs.

·        Benninga, Helmantel, and Sarig, 2005, “The timing of initial public offerings,” Journal of Financial Economics 75, 115-132.
This paper examines the model in which the companies decide when to make an IPO and conclude that it is consistent with many empirical phenomena.

·        Ritter, 1991, “The Long-Run Performance of Initial Public Offerings,” Journal of Finance 46(1), 3-27.
The paper examines whether short-run underpricing of IPOs extends though a longer period.

 

Capital structure

Books providing the basics on capital structure:

·        Copeland and Weston, Financial Theory and Corporate Policy.

·        Megginson, Corporate Finance Theory.

·        Áðèãõåì, Ãàïåíñêè. Ôèíàíñîâûé ìåíåäæìåíò: ïîëíûé êóðñ.

Surveys:

·        Harris and Raviv, 1991, “The theory of capital structure,” Journal of Finance 46(1), 297-355.

·        Miller, 1991, “Leverage,” Journal of Finance 46(2), 479-488.
The Nobel prize lecture with lively discussion of theoretical, empirical, and anecdotal evidence.

Papers:

·        Titman and Wessels, 1988, “The Determinants of Capital Structure Choice,” Journal of Finance 43(1), 1-19.
Classical empirical test of different theories explaining capital structure.

·        Rajan and Zingales, 1995, “What Do We Know about Capital Structure? Evidence from International Data,” Journal of Finance 50(5), 1421-1460.
More advanced empirical study of the factors explaining the firms’ choice of capital structure.

·        Baker and Wurgler, 2002, Market timing and capital structure. Journal of Finance 57, 1-32.
The paper argues that capital structure is a result of a firm’s successive efforts to time the market.

·        Leary and Roberts, 2005, “Do Firms Rebalance Their Capital Structures?” Journal of Finance 60(6), 2575-2619.
Studying how the presence of adjustment costs influences the behavior of firms and biases the standard empirical tests.

The following papers try to explain capital structure of firms in the emerging markets.

·        Glen and Singh, 2004, “Comparing capital structures and rates of return in developed and emerging markets,” Emerging Markets Review 5, 161-192.

·        Booth, Aivazian, Demirguc-Kunt, and Maksimovic, 2001, “Capital Structures in Developing Countries,” Journal of Finance 56(1), 87-130.
Checking whether developing countries’ firms have the same determinants of their capital structures as firms in the developed countries.

·        Harvey, Lins, and Roper, 2004, “The effect of capital structure when expected agency costs are extreme,” Journal of Financial Economics 74, 3-30.
Testing whether debt can mitigate agency and information problems characteristic for companies in the emerging markets.

 

Private equity and venture capital

Books that describe what private equity and venture capital are and summarize research in the field:

·        Fenn, Liang and Prowse, “The Economics of Private Equity Market”.
http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/staffstudies/1990-99/ss168.pdf

·        Gompers and Lerner, 2004, “The Venture Capital Cycle”, MIT Press.

Surveys:

·        Leeds and Sunderland, 2003, “Private Equity in Emerging Markets: Rethinking the Approach”. http://info.worldbank.org/etools/docs/library/154716/domestic2003/pdf/leeds_article.doc
Review of private equity in emerging markets

Theory papers:

Two models devoted to explaining contracts and relationships between venture capitalists and entrepreneurs:

·        Berglöf, 1994, “A control theory of venture capital finance”, Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization, Vol. 10, No 2, pp. 247-267, available at JSTOR.

·        Hellman, 1998, “The allocation of control rights in venture capital contracts”, Rand Journal of Economics, vol. 29, 1, 57-76, available at JSTOR.

·        Lerner and Schoar, 2004, "The Illiquidity Puzzle: Theory and Evidence from Private Equity", Journal of Financial Economics 72, 3-40.
The paper provides a rationale for the existence of restrictions on transferring shares in a contract between a general partner (manager) and limited partners of a private equity fund

Recently large Russian business groups have started to invest in various venture projects. Such investments are not the same as classical venture capital investments, in which financing comes from a professional independent venture capitalist that collects money from a pool of investors. While classical venture capitalists only care about monetary returns from the venture itself, strategic investors also care about prospective synergies of a project with the firm’s core business. Why one or the other type of financing should arise is examined in the following paper:

·        Hellmann, 2002, “A theory of strategic venture investing”, Journal of Financial Economics 64, 285-314.

·        Hellmann, 2003, “When do Employees Become Entrepreneurs?” Stanford GSB Research Paper No. 1770, http://ssrn.com/abstract=315159
This paper is complementary to the previous one.

Empirical papers:

·        Kaplan and Strömberg, 2003, “Financial Contracting Theory Meets the Real World: Evidence From Venture Capital Contracts”, Review of Economic Studies, http://gsbwww.uchicago.edu/fac/steven.kaplan/research/kaplanstromberg.pdf
The paper analyses the correspondence of the real world venture capital contracts to the predictions of the financial contract theory. To a large extent, real world contracts turn to be well in agreement with their theoretical counterparts.

·        Lerner and Schoar, 2006, “Does legal enforcement affect financial transactions? The contractual channel in private equity”, Quarterly Journal of Economics, forthcoming, http://www.mit.edu/~aschoar/LDCPEDeals_rev6.pdf
The paper analyzes structures of private equity transactions (contracts) in a sample of developing countries. They find that the structure of a country's legal regime affects private contracts and the resulting valuation and returns on investment, and cannot easily be undone by (bi-lateral) private solutions.

·        Kaplan, Martel, and Strömberg, 2005, “How Do Legal Differences and Learning Affect Financial Contracts?” http://gsbwww.uchicago.edu/fac/steven.kaplan/research/ksintl.pdf
The authors show that venture capital contracts are different across legal regimes, but regardless of legal regime more experienced venture capitalists employ US style contracts and are significantly more successful than their peers.

Useful links:

·        http://www.rvca.ru/ Ñàéò Ðîññèéñêîé àññîöèàöèè ïðÿìîãî è âåí÷óðíîãî èíâåñòèðîâàíèÿ (ÐÀÂÈ). Â ðàçäåëå «ôàéëû» åñòü ïîäðîáíûé îáçîð ðûíêà çà 2004 ã. è íîìåðà âåñòíèêà ÐÀÂÈ. Äîñòóï ê íåêîòîðûì ôàéëàì òðåáóåò ðåãèñòðàöèè.

·        http://www.people.hbs.edu/jlerner/ Website of Josh Lerner, a leading private equity scholar, with a lot of interesting links

 

Comparative valuation of common and preferred stocks of Russian companies

·        Goetzmann, William N., Spiegel, Matthew I., and Andrey Ukhov, 2002, “Modeling and measuring Russian corporate governance: The case of Russian preferred and common shares”, Yale ICF Working Paper No. 02-06, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=305494

·        Muravyev, Alexander, 2004, “The Puzzle of Dual Class Stock in Russia. Explaining the Price Differential between Common and Preferred Shares”, EERC Working Paper Series No 04-07.

·        Luigi Zingales, 1994, “The Value of the Voting Right: A Study of the Milan Stock Exchange Experience”, Review of Financial Studies, 7: 125-148. http://gsbwww.chicagogsb.edu/fac/luigi.zingales/research/PSpapers/votingright1994.pdf

·        Luigi Zingales, 1995, "What Determines the Value of Corporate Votes?" Quarterly Journal of Economics, 110: 1047-1073. http://gsbwww.chicagogsb.edu/fac/luigi.zingales/research/PSpapers/value.pdf