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The purpose of this study was to leverage agency theory to examine the impact of board attributes on cash flow management in Ghana’s financial institutions.

Data for the study was collected from the annual published financial statements of selected financial institutions, which were obtained from their respective websites. The sampling technique used was purposive, resulting in the selection of 15 financial institutions in Ghana, of which 10 were listed on the Ghana Stock Exchange and 5 were non-listed. The study covered a period of 10 years, ranging from 2011 to 2020. The two-step generalized method of moments estimation was used to determine the relationship between the board attributes and cash flow management.

The study found that board size had a positive and significant influence on net cash flow from operating, investing and financing activities. The study also discovered that the proportion of nonexecutive directors had a positive and significant influence on net cash flow from operating, investing and financing activities. In addition, it was revealed that the proportion of female directors on the board exhibited a positive and significant influence on net cash flow from operating activities but a negative and significant influence on net cash flow from investing and financing activities.

The study recommends increasing female representation on corporate boards to 25%, as women bring valuable skills, knowledge and experience that positively impact the financial institutions’ cash flows.

This study focused on the impact of board attributes on cash flow management within Ghana. It explored how corporate governance affects strategic decisions related to cash flow management, contributing original insights to this field of research.

The circuit elements of every printed circuit board have the potential for failure during test and/or use. These failures can occur by forming short‐circuits between adjacent circuit elements, or by forming open‐circuits in the conductors. The risk sites can be identified by type, and the total number enumerated by manual inspection of the photolithographic masks used to fabricate the printed circuit layers. However, the circuit density of high performance printed circuit boards has become so great that meaningful manual analysis has become impractical. A more effective method is to use special graphics programs to analyse the computer‐aided design (CAD) data. The methodology developed to perform the CAD analysis of high performance printed circuit boards for short‐circuits utilises two powerful computer graphic tools: the Interactive Graphics System and the Unified Shapes Checking system. Test data for open‐circuits are generated using specially written alphanumeric routines. The data can be used for stress testing the printed circuit boards by wiring up special test modules that are plugged into the boards and then placing the boards into environmental test chambers. The printed circuits are checked for short‐circuits by putting them into groups that have no risk of shorting to each other (zero risk), and placing the groups in parallel under an electrical potential. The flow of current between the groups would indicate a short‐circuit. Similarly, the printed circuits can be checked for open‐circuits, by stringing them together into groups in series, and measuring the changes in resistance under thermal stress. Both types of test data can also be used for in‐process testing.

Nobody disputes the risk‐reducing effect of netting agreements in over‐the‐counter (OTC) derivative contracts. There is an evident interest for banking supervisors to promote such agreements, in order to improve the soundness of banks. The European Union (EU) has started to recognise this in its Solvency Ratio Directive of December 1989, limiting it to certain contracts of netting by novation. But, the Basle Committee consider that all netting agreements by novation and close out netting should be recognised as risk reducing. The European Commission has followed this advice and proposed two directives, one of which was adopted in March 1996, in order to align European regulation with the Basle guidelines. However, the European Commission has gone still further and, in May 1996, proposed a directive which will also make most of the netting agreements enforceable in the case of failure of one of the parties. As the above texts address mostly bilateral netting, with the emergence of multilateral netting, both the European Commission and the Basle supervisors have decided to try to apply to such agreements the rules on bilateral netting with some adaptations, through interpretation notes. Only the experience of the coming years will show if legislation is needed for the prudential recognition of multilateral netting.

Increased usage of the Internet at work has prompted organisations to write Internet Usage Policies to establish appropriate use. This article addresses the main components of an Internet Usage Policy, including security, monitoring and filtering, privacy rights, intellectual property, organisation representation, acceptable personal use, unacceptable personal use, investigation of violations and corrective action, and notification of policy. Each section explains what should be written in the policy, and how it should be written. Internet Usage Policies should be tailored to fit the organisation’s culture. Management must enforce the policies, but be careful not to act like big brother policing every activity employees engage in. Organisations will find that Internet Usage Policies provide a written basis for discouraging Internet misuse, but ultimately the organisational culture will have the strongest effect on employee behaviour.

How can large international financial firms go green in authentic ways? What enhances ‘Net Zero action’? Changes in global banks, fund managers, and insurance firms are at the heart of green finance. External change pressures – combined with problematic firm predispositions – exacerbate barriers to change and promote scepticism about authentic Net Zero change. Field research reveals main elements, connections, and interactions of this question by considering financial firms as complex socio-technical systems (Mitleton-Kelly, 2003). An interdisciplinary/holistic narrative approach (De Bakker et al., 2019) is adopted to design a conceptual framework that can support a green ‘behavioural theory of the financial firm’ (green BTFF). The BTFF presents an international version (Peng, 2001) of the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm (Barney, 1991; Hart, 1995; Teece et al., 1997).

The approach of this chapter is aimed at closing knowledge gaps and realign values in financial markets and society. By raising awareness about organised hypocrisy and facades (Brunsson, 1993; Cho et al., 2015; Schoeneborn et al., 2020) in financial firms the chapter aims at overcoming the gap between ‘talking’ and ‘walking’ in the financial sector. The chapter defines testable firm-level hypotheses for ‘Green Finance’ (Poterba, 2021) as well as – by implication – tests for ‘greenwashing’.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Federal Trade Commission v. Actavis, Inc. is a challenge to conventional antitrust analysis. Conventional civil antitrust cases are decided by a preponderance of the evidence. This means that conduct challenged under the rule of reason is only condemned if the conduct resulted in more competitive harm in the actual world than a world without the alleged violation. Under conventional analysis, the intent of the parties also plays only a supporting role in determining whether the conduct was anticompetitive. A holder of a valid patent has a right to exclude others practicing the patented technology. And, the patent holder is not assumed to have market power because it expended resources in maintaining exclusionary rights. Actavis creates doubts about these propositions in circumstances beyond the “reverse” payment settlement of a patent suit that may have delayed an alleged infringer market entry. This chapter explores whether applying Actavis logic to antitrust litigation can result in condemnation of practices where there is little chance of an anticompetitive effect, where the patent holder likely has a valid and infringed patent, where there is little reason to believe that the patent holder has market power, and where only one party, or no parties, to an agreement have an anticompetitive intent. This chapter also investigates whether Actavis creates new problems with standing analysis, damages calculations, and the balancing of efficiencies against anticompetitive effects. Nevertheless, the lower courts have begun to extend the logic of Actavis. This is apparent in the condemnation of no-Authorized-generic settlements.

Around the mid-2000s, the first wave of young Thai women who attained fame organically on the internet emerged when their photos and profiles were widely shared by friends and fans in web communities and discussion forums. Comprising mainly of students, these women were known as “net idols” and celebrated primarily for their looks, as online conversations focused on their beauty, cosmetic and dressing skills, and overall pleasant appearance. Since then, some of these net idols have parlayed their online popularity into commercial exchanges and partnerships by advertising for clients, evolving into a commercial form of microcelebrity known as “influencers” (Abidin, 2016), while still others progressed into different forms of internet celebrity confined only to online fame as social capital without further tangible returns. In this chapter, we review the conceptual history of net idols and a subset of influencers known as “beauty bloggers” in Thailand, drawing on observations and content analyses of net idols’ Instagram posts, beauty bloggers’ Facebook posts, conversations from selected discussion boards, and popular sentiment about these internet celebrities in tabloids and online websites. Most of the content is originally in Thai and translated by the first author.

I find that median wealth plummeted over the years 2007–2010, and by 2010 was at its lowest level since 1969. The inequality of net worth, after almost two decades of little movement, was up sharply from 2007 to 2010. Relative indebtedness continued to expand from 2007 to 2010, particularly for the middle class, though the proximate causes were declining net worth and income rather than an increase in absolute indebtedness. In fact, the average debt of the middle class actually fell in real terms by 25 percent. The sharp fall in median wealth and the rise in inequality in the late 2000s are traceable to the high leverage of middle-class families in 2007 and the high share of homes in their portfolio. The racial and ethnic disparity in wealth holdings, after remaining more or less stable from 1983 to 2007, widened considerably between 2007 and 2010. Hispanics, in particular, got hammered by the Great Recession in terms of net worth and net equity in their homes. Households under age 45 also got pummeled by the Great Recession, as their relative and absolute wealth declined sharply from 2007 to 2010.