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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.

The demand-side view of creditor rights posits a negative association between creditor rights and corporate borrowings. The purpose of this paper is as follows: first, the author examines whether the demand-side effect is more pronounced amongst firms with excess promoter shareholding. Subsequently, the authors analyze the impact of high promoter holdings on investment decisions owing to bankruptcy reforms.

To answer the above questions, the authors exploit the passage of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) (2016) that strengthens the creditor rights of lenders, which impacts the borrowings and financing activities of Indian corporates. Using a panel of listed Indian firms over the period of 2012–2019, the authors analyze how the IBC affects firms’ borrowings and financing decisions with excess promoter holdings.

The authors find that bankruptcy reforms led to a statistically significant decline in the use of borrowed funds (primarily secured and long-term debt) by firms with high concentrated holdings. The analysis also indicates that firms with excess promoter ownership face an increased cost of debt due to bankruptcy reforms. As a result, firms with excess promoter holdings curtail their investments. Overall, the results indicate that India’s bankruptcy reforms significantly affect the firms’ financing and investment decisions with highly concentrated ownership.

While past research has explored the relationship between bankruptcy reforms and demand for/supply of debt, the authors provide novel empirical evidence on the role of promoter holdings that affects the relationship between bankruptcy law and financing and investment decisions. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first to investigate the role of ownership structure in the context of bankruptcy reforms by using a quasi-natural experiment.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the cash holding of firms during a crisis and test the widely accepted determinants of corporate cash holding (CCH) for their consistency across periods of crisis, stability and recovery, and across firm categories, in the emerging market context of India.

The study employs panel data and Fama–Macbeth regression techniques on publicly listed firms during 2001–2015, amid controls for idiosyncratic factors. Further empirical analysis is carried out through the disaggregation of firms based on group affiliation, controlling stake of promoters, financial constraints and firm size.

The study reports that cash levels are significantly higher during crisis periods for Indian firms. Moreover, promoter holding is observed to be a strong predictor of CCH, which is an addition to the list of predictors in existing literature. Additionally, most of the predictors of cash holding turn out to be consistent through periods of financial crisis, stability and recovery. A firm’s age and growth prospects do not determine cash levels for Indian firms; however, cash-flow volatility, firm size, leverage and non-cash working capital requirements help to determine the cash levels of the firm consistently through different periods. Group-affiliated firms are less likely to engage in cash accumulation as opposed to firms that are large and financially constrained and have high promoter stakes.

The study is unique because it examines the consistency of determinants of cash holding across good and turbulent times and across firm classifications. Moreover, the study uses a broad sample of firms and investigates the topic for a relatively long period in an emerging market setup.

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.

Ownership concentration (OC) is an essential element of corporate governance (CG) for a firm's performance. The purpose of the study is to investigate the connectivity of OC (particularly considering promoters' holdings) with the firm's financial distress (FD) of non-financial firms (NFF) listed in India.

The panel data regression analysis (applying quantile regression for the 25th quantile, 50th quantile, and 75th quantile) is employed to inspect the connection between OC (promoters' holdings) and the firm's FD (computed using Altman Z-scores). The data for a cross-section of 78 listed firms (non-financial) in India, considering the time frame of five years (2015–16 to 2019–20), are cumulated for the study. The leverage (leverage ratio), competition (Lerner index), valuation (mcap), sales, and profitability (net profit margin) variables are incorporated as control variables.

The study's findings reveal that OC (promoters' holdings) positively relates to the firm's FD because OC negatively associates with Zscore (as Zscore is inverse to FD). Additionally, the non-linear association also indicates positive connectivity of OC and Zscore (a U shape association), alternatively showing a negative non-linear connection of OC (promoters' holdings) with the firm's FD (inverse U shape association). This result implies that initially, promoters' holdings enhance the firm's FD, and after a maximum threshold, promoters' holdings start reducing FD in non-financial listed firms in India. The findings also show an interesting aspect of OC at different quantiles. The results indicate that a higher OC is powerful when distress is both high and low to achieve stability. Conversely, less OC among promoters is required to achieve such stability when the distress is medium (50th quantile).

The scope of the study is limited to NFFs listed in India, which is one of the limitations of the present paper. Hence, this does not provide evidence for financial firms. Only one aspect of OC (promoters' holdings) is considered in the current study. However, OC can also be explored for FD in terms of institutional and retail investors. These limitations can be considered as the present study's future scope.

Most of the studies regarding OC have explored the broader aspect of OC. However, the current study has narrowed the OC to promoters' holdings. No other study exclusively examines the association of OC (as promoters' holdings) with the firm's FD. Promoters' holdings have a more significant role in a firm's CG practices because of direct involvement of promoters' holdings in business activities. Thus, the present study's findings have notable implications for managers, policymakers, and investors concerned with the financial health of firms.

Based on the agency theory, the purpose of this paper is to theoretically argue and empirically investigate how ownership structure impacts the capital structure of the listed mid‐cap companies in India and whether the capital structure as exogenous variable has a role in determining ownership structure as well.

Simultaneity between capital structure and ownership structure is checked through Hausman specification test on endogeneity. Fixed effect panel regression model is used to analyze five years of data (2005‐2009) on the sample units, to find the relation between leverage and ownership structure after controlling for profitability, risk, tangibility, growth and size.

Empirical results on Indian firms suggest that the ownership structure does impact capital structure but not the vice versa. Consistent with theoretical prediction empirical results reveal that the leverage is positively related to concentrated shareholding and has a negative relation with diffuseness of shareholding after controlling for profitability, risk, tangibility, growth and size. The findings are consistent with “managerial entrenchment hypothesis” and “pecking order theory” of capital structure.

The findings of the paper will enable the practitioners and analysts to understand as to why, in the bank and financial institution‐dominated debt financing system in India, leverage is closely associated with concentrated ownership pattern and why retained earning is a preferred vehicle of financing for the firms with diffused shareholding.

The results of the study enrich the literature on capital structure, agency cost and corporate governance issues in several ways.

This study aims to compare the short-run performance of construction and non-construction initial public offerings (IPOs) that are offered in India during 2006–2015. The study also attempts to investigate the impact of ownership structure (i.e. concentrated ownership in the hand of promoters and institutional ownership) and market sentiment on the performance of construction sector IPOs in short run.

A total of 281 IPOs were listed at National Stock Exchange, India, during the study period, and 44 of those were from construction sector. The short-run performance of these construction and non-construction IPOs was compared using two indicators, i.e. monthly stock return (SR) and excess return over market benchmark (MAR). To examine the effect of concentrated ownership in the hand of promoters, institutional ownership and market sentiment on IPO performance, systematic dynamic panel regression model was developed.

The IPOs of construction firms perform significantly better than the non-construction firms. The performance of construction IPOs is significantly driven by the lag effect. This suggests a significant informational inefficiency, which results in a delayed reaction by investors. The market sentiment has a positive influence on the performance of construction sector IPOs, whereas the institutional holding has a negative influence.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first attempt to examine the performance of construction sector IPOs in short run. The study uses systematic dynamic panel data regression, which provides better and reliable estimates.

Despite the widespread prevalence of share pledging by Indian promoters, this area remains out of the researchers’ purview. This study aims to bridge this research gap by delineating the impact of promoter share pledging on future stock price crash risk and financial performance in India.

A sample of 257 companies listed on the Standard and Poor’s Bombay Stock Exchange 500 (S&P BSE 500) Index has been analysed using panel (fixed-effects) data regression methodology over 2011–2020. Further, alternative proxies for crash risk and financial performance are adopted to ensure that the study’s initial findings are robust. Finally, the instrumental variable with the two-stage least squares (IV-2SLS) method has also been employed to alleviate endogeneity concerns.

The results suggest a significantly positive relationship between promoter share pledging and future stock price crash risk in India. Conversely, this association is significantly negative for future financial performance. Moreover, the results hold, even after including alternative proxies of stock price crash risk and financial performance and addressing endogeneity concerns.

Owing to the sizeable equity shareholdings of the promoters, share pledging has remained a lucrative source of finance in India. Despite the popularity, the findings of this study question the relevance of share pledging by Indian promoters considering its impact on aggravating future stock price crash risk and deteriorating future financial performance.

This study aims to investigate the impact of banking relationships and ownership concentration on corporate cash holdings (CCH) in 333 Indian micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) for nine years (2011–2020).

The authors use system generalized method of moments approach to examine the impact of banking relationships and ownership concentration on CCH.

The paper finds that the firm's number of banking relationships share a concave (inverted U-shaped) relationship with the cash holding levels. Initially, the positive relationship may signal weak creditworthiness of MSMEs or be a consequence of bank free-rider monitoring issues. The negative effect after a certain level shows that the competition among banks reduces the firm's financial constraints and therefore makes the firms hoard less cash. The authors also document an inverse relationship between ownership concentration and cash holdings. The authors' results suggest that the presence of large shareholders acts as efficient monitors, reducing the risk of potential agency conflicts and thereby managerial entrenchment resulting in lower cash levels. This association remains unchanged for MSMEs in the service sector. However, the quadratic association between banking relationships and CCH vanishes in the presence of a service sector dummy in the regression model. The authors find a significant positive linear relationship in this regard.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first paper that studies banking relationships and ownership concentration as determinants of Indian MSMEs.

This study aims to examine the effectiveness of governance in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and explores if board independence enhances the firm value of SOEs in India and China. The study further explores the moderation impact of promoter ownership in enhancing firm value.

The study is confined to government-owned enterprises in India and China and is based on a sample of 53 central government-owned firms listed in National Stock Exchange of India and 110 state-owned firms listed in Shanghai Stock Exchange of China for the period 2010–2017. A fixed-effect panel regression analysis has been used to examine the effect of board independence on firm value.

The study found that board independence adds value to the SOEs in India and China and the presence of independent directors (IDs) in the board of SOEs act as better monitors of performance to protect the interest of minority shareholders. Probably, they minimize agency conflict and provide resources to the firm and management. The greater the government shareholdings, the board independence further enhances value of SOEs in India and China.

Compliance with guidelines on IDs in SOEs serves as an effective corporate governance mechanism and the presence of IDs can signal better firm performance. The government promoters align with the IDs in better monitoring of SOE performance.

The study is unique and contributes to the literature by examining the impact of board independence on firm value in the context of SOEs in India and China and also provides insight on the effect of promoter ownership on the effectiveness on board independence.