Search results

The purpose of this study is to provide a holistic view of the emergence of shareholder activism (SA) in India. However, specifically, this study aims at fulfilling the research gap by discussing the policy and legal advancement in the area of SA and investigating the chronological evolution of SA, manifestations of SA, motives of SA, outcome of SAs and impact of SA on the financial performance of the firm.

This study used a mixed methodology (both qualitative and quantitative) to draw inferences, including content analysis, descriptive statistics, independent sample t-test and paired sample t-test. The data has been collected from the annual reports of the sample companies and the Prowess database. Return on assets and return on equity have been used as measures of financial performance while investigating the difference in financial performance between firms subjected to SA and firms not subjected to SA.

The findings of this study suggest that there has been significant growth in the occurrence of SA incidents in India in the past decade, with shareholders prominently manifesting by opposing the proposals at annual general meetings/extraordinary general meetings, mostly involving governance-related demands. The findings from the independent sample t-tests revealed that there has been a significant difference in the financial performance of the sample subjected to SA and firms not subjected to SA. Furthermore, the results of the paired sample t-test provide strong evidence of significant improvement in the financial performance of firms’ post-SA.

The findings of this study have implications for various stakeholders. The findings of this study suggest that SA has been relatively more successful in the Indian context and may encourage minority shareholders to follow active participation through shareholder proposals and votes rather than a passive strategy to trade and exit. For firms, it can provide valuable inferences about the emergence of SA and how it has a positive impact on the financial performance of the firm, which can lead to a change in the perception of investors and promoters who perceive SA as a threat (Gillan and Starks 2000; Hartzell and Starks, 2003). For policymakers, it can act as a tool to investigate whether the regulatory changes have been able to bring the intended transparency, accountability and enhanced shareholder participation. This will encourage policymakers to be more agile, as their efforts are bearing fruit. This will also act as a guide to formulating future policies and regulations.

This study is an effort to provide a holistic view of SA scenarios in a developing economy setting like India, where SA is a very recent phenomenon. Although there are studies in the area of SA, there is a dearth of studies that have investigated the various dimensions of SA in the Indian context in a very systematic and extensive manner, investigating all the different dimensions of SA. Furthermore, this study also intends to investigate the impact of SA, which is normally perceived as a threat to financial performance and provide valuable contrasting evidence.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between accounting conservatism and pledging of shares by controlling shareholders of a firm to obtain a loan. The pledging of shares by the controlling shareholders of a firm results in alterations to the payoff and risk structure for these shareholders. Since accounting numbers have valuation implications, pledging of shares by a controlling shareholder has an impact on accounting policy choices made by the firm. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of controlling shareholder share pledging to obtain a loan on a specific accounting policy choice, namely, conservatism.

The paper uses a large data set from India comprising 14,786 firm years consisting of 1,570 firms belonging to 58 industries for a period of 11 years (2009–2019). The authors use ordinary least square regression with robust standard errors. The authors conduct robustness checks and the results are consistent across alternative statistical methodologies and alternative measures of the primary dependent and independent variables.

The primary results show that pledging of shares by the controlling shareholders results in higher conditional conservatism and lower unconditional conservatism. Further analysis reveals that the relationship is stronger when the controlling shareholder holds a majority ownership in the firm. Additionally, the results show that for business group affiliated firms, which are unique to developing countries, both the conditional and the unconditional conservatism are incrementally lower when the controlling shareholder pledges the shares. For family firms with a family member as CEO, the conditional conservatism is incrementally higher and the unconditional conservatism is incrementally lower. Finally, the authors show that the results hold when the pledge intensity variable is measured with a one-year lag and finally, the authors show that conditional conservatism is incrementally higher in the year of the increase in the pledge and the year after, but there is no such incremental impact on unconditional conservatism.

The research is limited to the listed firms in India. Since majority of the listed firms are controlled by families and the family firms around the world are heterogeneous the findings of the research may not be applicable to other countries.

The study has implications for policy-making and monitoring of the pledging by the controlling shareholders. It also helps the investors in making investment decisions with respect to family firms in India.

The study is unique as it focuses on the relationship between pledging of shares by the controlling shareholders and its impact on accounting conservatism. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research integrating these two aspects.

Leveraging signalling theory and institutional environment theory, this study aims to examine how the entrepreneurial orientation of emerging market firms impacts initial public offering (IPO) performance.

The authors conduct regression analysis based on archival data from 312 firms’ IPOs in India.

The results in the Indian context suggest it differs from IPO performance in developed markets. In an emerging market context, the findings suggest that only competitive aggressiveness is valued by investors in IPOs. The findings further show that proactiveness and autonomy negatively influence IPO underpricing.

The research propositions imply that, owing to institutional voids in emerging markets, investors’ risk propensity and, hence, rewarding a firm’s entrepreneurial orientation differ from those in developed markets.

Extant literature has given limited attention to the dynamics of entrepreneurial orientation and the effect of each dimension of entrepreneurial orientation on IPO performance in emerging markets.

The study intends to determine the environment, social and governance (ESG)'s impact on the firm's value. In addition, how ownership concentration (OC) and transparency and disclosures (TD) influence the impact of firm's ESG on its valuation (firm value).

The relevant panel data with a sample of 78 Indian firms for five years (2016–2020) are gathered. Both linear and nonlinear connections of firm's ESG with its value are tested. In addition, TD and two components of OC (stakes of promoters and institutional investors) are empirically tested as moderators on the connectivity of the firm's ESG with its value.

The linear association of firm's ESG with its value is found insignificant. ESG is found to have a positive and nonlinear (U-shaped) impact on the value of the firms. TD does not moderate the connectivity of firm's ESG with its valuation (firm value). The higher stakes of promoters positively affect the association of firm's ESG with the valuation. However, the high stakes of institutional investors retard the ESG's influence on the firm value.

The study is on Indian firms for five years. A sample of more than one nation and a longer duration (10 years) could have helped better determine the associations among the variables. In turn, these limitations can be the present study's future scope. In addition, the authors find a lack of standardisation of the ESG scales, which is a problem in measuring it. Using standardisation scales of ESG for the analysis can also be future scope on the topic.

The investors would be wary of the level of ESG to influence the firms' value positively. Managers also need to be careful to have sincere efforts for ESG to reap its rich dividends. Policymakers may take cognisance that despite having board seats (in a few cases), institutional investors negatively (instead of positively as expected) influences the ESG's association with the firm's value. They may bring some guidelines or legislative changes to fix responsibility on the part of the institutional investors.

No study reports the linear and nonlinear association of ESG on the firm's value to observe clearer connectivity between the two. Similarly, no study is observed to have promoters and institutional investors as moderators on the association of firm's ESG with the valuation (firm value). Hence, the present study considerably augments the extant literature on the topic and its contribution.

The study examines the IPO resilience grounded on the firm’s intrinsic factors.

We examine the association of IPO performance and post-listing firm’s performance with issuers' pre-listing financial and qualitative traits using panel data regression.

IPOs floated in the Indian market from July 2009 to March 31, 2022, evince the notable influence of issuers' pre-IPO fundamentals and legitimacy traits on IPO returns and post-listing earning power. Where the pandemic’s favorable impact is discerned on the post-listing year earning power of the issuer firms, the loss-making issuers appear to be adversely affected by the Covid disruption. Perhaps, the successful listing equipped the issuers with the financial flexibility to combat market challenges vis-à-vis failed issuers deprived of desired IPO proceeds.

High initial returns followed by a declining pattern substantiate the retail investors to be less informed vis-à-vis initial investors, valuers and underwriters, who exit post-listing after profit booking. Investing in the shares of the newly listed ventures post-listing in the secondary market can shield retail investors from the uncertainty losses of being uninformed. The IPO market needs stringent regulations ensuring the verification of the listing valuation, the firm’s credentials and the intent of utilizing IPO proceeds. Healthy development of the IPO market merits reconsidering the listing of ventures with weak fundamentals suspected to withstand the market challenges.

Given the tremendous rise in the new firm venturing into the primary market and the spike in IPOs countering the losses immediately post-opening, the study examines the loss-making and young firms IPOs separately, adding novelty to the study.

This paper aims to evaluate whether promoter holding influences a bank’s liquidity in India’s leading emerging market. Furthermore, it also evaluates the moderating role of risk-weighted assets (RWA) on the relationship between promoter holding and liquidity.

The data consists of 24 banks for the period of 12 years from 2010 to 2021. Static panel data is used to analyze the relationship between the liquidity coverage ratio (LCR) as the dependent variable, the promoter used as an explanatory variable and RWA used as a moderating variable in this study.

This study concludes that an increase in promoter holding helps to improve the liquidity of Indian banks. Moreover, it also shows that using RWA as a moderating term enhances the relationship between promoter holdings and Indian banks’ liquidity.

This study evaluated the impact of promoter ownership solely on the LCR, a statistic used to measure the short-term liquidity of banks in the Indian setting. Additional corporate governance factors, such as the makeup of the board of directors, relevant ownership concentration factors and external factors with the potential to affect the liquidity position of banks, could potentially be the subject of future investigations.

This paper has both managerial and policy-level implications. It shows that it is advantageous for banks’ ownership composition to include more enormous promoter holdings to enhance banks’ liquidity. Policymakers can, thus, formulate policies to encourage banks to have more extensive promoter holdings.

The impact of promoter ownership on bank liquidity has not been evaluated in earlier research projects. Furthermore, the use of RWA as a moderating variable to determine this link has not been fully investigated, particularly in the context of a developing country like India.

This article aims to explore how cluster affiliation moderates the relationship between family involvement and speed of internationalization in family firms. The speed of internationalization is examined in terms of earliness and post-internationalization speed.

The research is based on a sample of 639 Portuguese family businesses (FBs) created and internationalized between 2010 and 2018 that was retrieved from the Iberian Balance Analysis System – SABI database. The partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to assess the measurement and construct the model.

The results suggest that higher levels of family involvement in ownership and management make family firms enter on international markets in later stages of their development but, after the first international market entry, the firms are able to exhibit a higher post-internationalization speed. When considering the effect of cluster affiliation, the authors found that clustered FBs are more likely to engage in early internationalization and to accelerate the post-internationalization process than non-clustered FBs.

The study's findings are explained by the existence of socially proximate relationships with other cluster members, based on similarity, trust, knowledge exchange and sense of belonging, which push family firms to internationalize and increase their level of international commitment over time. The empirical evidence, therefore, highlights the primary role of industrial clusters in moderating the relationship between family involvement, earliness of internationalization and post-internationalization speed.

After completion of the case study, the students will be able to appreciate and understand why brands are an essential asset to the company and how they can enhance business value, understand the factors needed to grow brands in the growth stages and evaluate the choices that start-up companies have to grow their brand in competitive and growing markets.

Mamaearth was born as a direct-to-consumer brand in 2016 by a couple who could not find chemical-free, safe products for their child. The company that introduced as a baby-care brand soon consolidated itself to play in the space of personal care category (targeting millennials), and by 2020, it was earning majority of its revenue from skincare. It started by leveraging the power of social media space and online commerce and slowly moved to be a national brand with offline footprint and mass-media communication. In its growth journey, it acquired many brands and launched a few to cater to the specialized needs of its target audience. As the company grew, attracted impressive investors and started clocking profits, it aspired for an initial public offering (IPO). Varun and Ghazal Alagh, the founders of Mamaearth, knew that to refloat an IPO and to grow the company further, they needed to redefine their portfolio and marketing strategy. They had a choice to either invest in building a broader portfolio – organically or inorganically – or expand across geographies. Both were an option, albeit expensive, which could cost Mamaearth its profitability.

This case is intended for discussion in undergraduate and graduate management courses.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing.

This paper aims to empirically investigate the moderating role of corporate governance (CG) in the capital structure-performance relationship.

The analysis is based on top Business Today-500 companies and covers a time span of 10 years. The fixed effect panel regression model is used to examine the impact of CG mechanisms on the relationship between capital structure and firm performance.

The core findings of the study indicate significant positive moderating role of board independence, board size and family ownership on the relationship between leverage and performance.

The results enable the managers of Indian firms to comprehend the significance of CG framework while taking financing decisions. The findings encourage managers to raise debt funds in those firms that adhere to good governance norms.

Unlike extant studies that emphasize on the moderating impact of single CG variable in leverage-performance relationship, the current work comprehensively examines the role of many CG factors that moderate the relationship between capital structure and firm performance. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the present study is the first of its kind with respect to India.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between earnings quality and corporate cash holdings in an emerging economy. Existing literature posits that earnings quality is a result of information asymmetry and firms with lower earnings quality increases cash holdings, to shield the firm from future uncertainties. In this paper, the authors propose a ‘private benefits hypothesis’, which suggests that lower earnings quality is an indicator of opportunism and expropriation of resources in the firm, through tunneling or excessive executive compensations. As a result, firms with lower earnings quality increase cash holdings in their control, to increase their private benefits and to avoid the scrutiny of the external stakeholders. The authors further examine the monitoring role played by institutional investors on cash holdings, with varying degrees of earnings quality.

This study uses an unbalanced panel data sourced from Prowessdx, from 2000 to 2019. The analysis employs 20,231 firm-year observations from 2,421 firms. Earnings quality is calculated following Dechow and Dichev (2002).

Empirical analysis confirms that the firms with higher earnings quality reduce cash. Further, institutional investors reduce the cash holdings in firms with higher earnings quality. Institutional investors effectively reduce the cash only in firms with at least 10% of equity shareholding. The results are robust to alternative measures of earnings quality and endogeneity concerns.

This study diverges from the information asymmetry hypothesis in the existing literature on earnings quality and cash holdings and highlights the underlying private benefits hypothesis, that will impact cash holdings. Next, the 10% institutional shareholding is important in the Indian context as it represents the minimum threshold at which block holders can request extraordinary general meetings (Section 100 of the Companies Act 2013) or the involvement of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) (Section 213 of the Companies Act 2013). This study highlights that unlike in Anglo-Saxon economies, institutional investors or other minority shareholders are empowered by the Companies Act 2013 to play a vital role in corporate governance with a mere 10% equity.