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In recent years, investment management companies and other financial service entities have placed an increasing emphasis on strengthening their compliance departments and systems. Factors contributing to this heightened emphasis on compliance include the globalisation and growth of the financial services industry; the development of new and more complex financial instruments; increased scrutiny, higher standards, and tougher sanctions from regulators; and several high‐profile failures that resulted, at least in part, from inadequate compliance. To meet the heightened demands placed on compliance personnel, most investment managers have, to a degree utilised advances in technology to ease the burdens and to improve overall compliance. One of the main uses of technology has been to monitor compliance of securities transactions with regulatory and client‐imposed investment requirements and limitations prior to the execution of the transactions (so‐called ‘pre‐trade compliance’). This paper examines automated pre‐trade compliance systems, focusing on the reasons such systems are needed, the types of systems that are available and the benefits and limitations of such systems.

This study is a follow up of an earlier investigation concerning the effects of governance practices and investment strategies on public pension fund risk adjusted financial performance. Specifically, the inquiry uses three cross sectional national surveys of state and local government retirement systems to determine how governance practices in terms of system policies, board purview, and board composition impact abnormal returns. Results indicate that governance practices, particularly board purview over investment decisions, continue to have a direct negative impact on risk adjusted financial performance even after controlling for other factors.

This study is a follow up of an earlier investigation concerning the effects of governance practices and investment strategies on public pension fund risk adjusted financial performance. Specifically, the inquiry uses three cross sectional national surveys of state and local government retirement systems to determine how governance practices in terms of system policies, board purview, and board composition impact abnormal returns. Results indicate that governance practices, particularly board purview over investment decisions, continue to have a direct negative impact on risk adjusted financial performance even after controlling for other factors.

After first being issued in draft in July 1998 and then taking a year to go through Parliament, the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (FISMA) finally became law on 14th June, 2000. The Treasury, the government department responsible for the UK financial services industry, has, however, just announced that the FISMA will not come fully into force until summer 2001, although some sections may perhaps come into force earlier.

The paper uses 101 years of Chilean and international financial assets returns to investigate mean-variance optimal portfolio allocations. The key conclusion is that the share of international unhedged investments is substantial even in minimum risk portfolios (20%), unless the period 1980–2002 is assumed to be drawn from a different distribution and previous history is disregarded. In addition to that, the paper finds that mean-variance optimal investors would have generated substantial demand for an asset replicating the return profile of an efficient pay-as-you-go pension scheme. Labour income and departures from log-normality of returns might, however, affect the latter conclusion.

The purpose of this study is to attempt to explore how host governmental restriction and interfirm trust influence telecommunications operators (telcos) to choose international telecommunications alliance forms among equity alliances, relational alliances and recurrent alliances in three emerging markets: China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

This study utilizes multiple discriminant analysis to analyze 111 international alliances established in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan during 1993-2004.

This study finds that host governmental restriction exerts greater influence on the choice of alliance form than interfirm trust. Telcos tend to develop non-equity alliances when governmental restriction is strong. In addition, they tend to develop equity and relational alliances when interfirm trust in high.

Two limitations are: this study only explores the impacts of a number of factors (host governmental restriction and interfirm trust) on alliance form choice, and it only focuses on bilateral alliances in telecommunications services industry. This study suggests that future study should explore other strategic factors (e.g. firms' capability, competitors' strategy) and multi-lateral alliances.

This study provides three managerial suggestions. First, when international telcos establish alliances in emerging markets, they should primarily evaluate host governmental restrictions, and second assess interfirm trust. In addition, if local telcos intend to build relational and equity alliances to acquire international telcos' technology and marketing know-how, they should enhance interfirm trust with them. Lastly, when host governments attempt to attract foreign equity investment, they should remove restrictions on foreign ownership and provide support and friendly regulatory institutions.

Most literature about telecommunications service industry focuses on developed markets and uses descriptive or case analysis. To fill these research gaps, this study conducts an empirical research by analyzing the international alliances in three emerging markets: China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The findings not only provide suggestions to international telcos, local telcos and host governments in these markets but also can be applied to other emerging markets.

Russia's size – both in terms of population and geography, spanning 11 time zones, 89 oblasts (states or regions) and autonomous republics and its privatization program, encompassing some 100,000 small-scale enterprises, 25,000 medium to large firms, and 300 or so of its largest firms, made its privatization program the largest sale/transfer of assets conducted among the transition economies, with the possible exception of China. Comparisons by many of the program's critics, and there are many, to Poland, Hungary, or the Czech republic are invidious, especially the latter two countries whose populations are similar to just that of greater Moscow.

Sees the objective of teaching financial management to be to help managers and potential managers to make sensible investment and financing decisions. Acknowledges that financial theory teaches that investment and financing decisions should be based on cash flow and risk. Provides information on payback period; return on capital employed, earnings per share effect, working capital, profit planning, standard costing, financial statement planning and ratio analysis. Seeks to combine the practical rules of thumb of the traditionalists with the ideas of the financial theorists to form a balanced approach to practical financial management for MBA students, financial managers and undergraduates.

This paper aims to empirically verify the impact of the mandatory dividend law on the investment of publicly traded companies.

The sample includes 212,595 observations from publicly traded companies from 47 different countries over the period from 2000 to 2016. The authors estimated a regression model by panel data methods to show the impact of the mandatory dividend on firm’s investment, more specifically in their sensitivities of investment to cash flow and to growth opportunities. In addition, the average treatment effect on the treated was estimated through sample matching.

The results indicate that the mandatory dividend have a direct and indirect impact on corporate investment.

Legislators and economic agents can use the results of the present research to evaluate the continuity or implementation of this legal mechanism (mandatory dividend) to evaluate economic moments favorable to its use or to create different legal rules to smooth the impact of this mechanism on the investment of companies.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of companies’ Shariah compliance (SC) debt financing decisions, financing with retained earnings (REs), cash holdings, capital expenditures and dividend pay-out policies.

The sample consisted of 1,648 firm-year observations of GCC non-financial firms from various industries. The authors scrutinised the firms over a period of eight financial years from 2012 to 2019. To analyse the research hypotheses, the authors used a panel data model using ordinary least squares and generalised method of moments, depending on historical data.

The results of this study show a negative effect of SC on debt financing decision and dividend pay-out policies but a positive effect on financing decision with REs, cash holdings and the decision on capital expenditures.

This study's findings provide a better understanding of the role of restrictions of financing options in SC companies on financing decisions in the GCC. Whether religious or simply interested in investing in SC companies, investors can benefit from knowing that these companies make financial decisions that may affect their short- and long-term profits for policymakers and regulators. This study may be valuable in evaluating the effect of restrictions imposed by Islamic Shariah on how firms make different financial decisions. Policymakers should encourage the issuance of Islamic financial products and prepare two financial indicators to classify SC firms.

The main contribution of this study is to obtain empirical evidence on the effect of SC on a set of financial decisions. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to focus on non-financial companies committed to Shariah. They do not depend on interest-bearing loans for their financing but are limited to financing by shares, financing with REs and financing using various Islamic financing formulas.