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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent of voluntary disclosures in UK higher education institutions’ (HEIs) annual reports and examine whether internal governance structures influence disclosure in the period following major reform and funding constraints.

The authors adopt a modified version of Coy and Dixon’s (2004) public accountability index, referred to in this paper as a public accountability and transparency index (PATI), to measure the extent of voluntary disclosures in 130 UK HEIs’ annual reports. Informed by a multi-theoretical framework drawn from public accountability, legitimacy, resource dependence and stakeholder perspectives, the authors propose that the characteristics of governing and executive structures in UK universities influence the extent of their voluntary disclosures.

The authors find a large degree of variability in the level of voluntary disclosures by universities and an overall relatively low level of PATI (44 per cent), particularly with regards to the disclosure of teaching/research outcomes. The authors also find that audit committee quality, governing board diversity, governor independence and the presence of a governance committee are associated with the level of disclosure. Finally, the authors find that the interaction between executive team characteristics and governance variables enhances the level of voluntary disclosures, thereby providing support for the continued relevance of a “shared” leadership in the HEIs’ sector towards enhancing accountability and transparency in HEIs.

In spite of significant funding cuts, regulatory reforms and competitive challenges, the level of voluntary disclosure by UK HEIs remains low. Whilst the role of selected governance mechanisms and “shared leadership” in improving disclosure, is asserted, the varying level and selective basis of the disclosures across the surveyed HEIs suggest that the public accountability motive is weaker relative to the other motives underpinned by stakeholder, legitimacy and resource dependence perspectives.

This is the first study which explores the association between HEI governance structures, managerial characteristics and the level of disclosure in UK HEIs.

To examine whether the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in its recent rule changes has provided the appropriate separation between its supervisory authority and the management of the Exchange.

Describes the regulatory and governance structure proposed by the NYSE in connection with its public offering; discusses policy objections the security industry has made to the proposal, reviews responses by the NYSE and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to those objections; and discusses what steps might be on the horizon to better rationalize the regulatory and business side of the new for‐profit NYSE.

The NYSE's proposal should provide for regulatory consolidation with the NASD. The proposal heightens the conflict between a for‐profit exchange and its regulatory function. The proposal governance structure ignores the fact that NYSE LLC is the Exchange and has plenary authority over NYSE regulation. The proposal does not provide fair representation for members. The proposal does not provide appropriate treatment of market data.

Provides a comprehensive view of recent changes to the NYSE's regulatory and governance structure and issues raised by the securities industry in response to those changes.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the likelihood that the presence of the deposit insurance policy encourages risk appetite behavior of banks in Sub-Saharan African (SSA). It argues that financial system stability is not a function of the choice of a deposit insurance scheme, but countries' peculiarities such as quality of institutions and the macroeconomic environment.

The study used the stereotype logit regression model and covers 47 SSA countries. Countries are categorized into two: explicit and implicit DIP scheme.

The study found that corrupt countries are more likely to adopt the implicit policy, while the explicit policy exposes them to credit risk, insolvency, and negative macroeconomic shocks, a reflection of weak institutions and unhealthy competition.

Paucity of substantial local literature on institutional perspective of deposit insurance (DI) constitutes the major limitation of this study.

The sub-region, therefore, faces a conundrum - desiring a deposit insurance scheme, but lacking the required institutions to maintain either a publicly owned regulatory system or the ability to transplant the private club model.

This study contributes to the institutional perspective of DI from SSA institutional perspective.

To explain the benefits and the regulations pertaining to Guernsey as a domicile for investment funds.

Explains the benefits of Guernsey as a fund domicile, the regulatory regime, and the types of fund vehicles used in Guernsey, registered and authorized.

Guernsey is one of the world’s largest offshore finance centers, with a thriving funds industry. The benefits of Guernsey as a fund domicile are substantial, including a proportionate, flexible and competitive funds regulatory regime, a stable political and legal structure, and a wealth of first-class fund service providers.

Expert guidance from experienced investment-fund lawyers.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a capped barrier option framework to consider the politically preferential treatment for bank loans incentivized by government capital injections and calculate loan-risk sensitive insurance premiums.

This paper takes a capped barrier option approach to the market valuation of the equity of the bank and the liability of the deposit insurer. The cap demonstrates the dynamics of a politically connected borrowing firm’s asset and highlights the truncated nature of loan payoffs. The barrier addresses that default can occur at any time before the maturity date. The bank participating in a government capital injection program is required to fund the politically connected firm that has preferential access to financing.

Political connection as such makes the bank more prone to risk taking at a reduced interest margin, produces greater safety for the bank owing to government capital injections, and leads to increasing the fair deposit insurance premium. The positive effect of political connection on the deposit insurance premium, which ignores the cap and the barrier yields significant over-estimation.

The study on the politically connected borrowing firm shows that political connection is likely to affect the distressed bank’s performance, yielding the political-connection cost of a reduced bank interest margin and the political-connection benefit of a reduced bank equity risk, contributing the literature on political connection and bank bailout.

The purpose of this paper is to outline the structures of collegial governance in Australian universities between 1945 and the “Dawkins reforms” of the late 1980s. It describes the historical contours of collegial governance in practice, the changes it underwent, and the structural limits within which it was able to operate.

The analysis is based upon the writings of academics and university administrators from the period, with more fine-grained exemplification provided by archival and other evidence from Faculties of Arts and their equivalents in newer universities.

Elements of hierarchy and lateral organisation coexisted in the pre-Dawkins university in ways not generally made explicit in the existing literature. This mixture was sustained by ideals about academic freedom.

By historicising “collegiality” the research problematises polemical uses of the term, either for or against. It also seeks to clarify the distinctiveness of contemporary structures—especially for those with no first-hand experience of the pre-Dawkins university—by demonstrating historical difference without resort to nostalgia.

“Collegiality” is a common concept in education and organisation studies, as well as in critiques of the contemporary corporate university. However, the concept has received little sustained historical investigation. A clearer history of collegial governance is valuable both in its own right and as a conceptually clarifying resource for contemporary analyses of collegiality and managerialism.

The purpose of this paper is to draw lessons to investors from the conduct of a hedge fund manager who according to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) complaint made false and misleading statements before and after an auditor’s reports, misappropriated for personal benefit over $1m, misappropriated clients’ assets, failed to conduct due diligence on third-party buyer, instructed an employee to mislead investors and satisfied some investors’ redemptions with other investors’ subscriptions (Ponzi scheme) without disclosing it to investors. Ironically, the scheme was unveiled by the economic crises and not the investors, their advisers or third-party hedge fund vendors. Corey Ribotsky set up the investment adviser NIR Group to manage four AJW Funds that invested in private equity in public companies in 1999. Through manipulation of financial statements, he also managed to collect about $136m in management and incentive fees over an eight-year period. The SEC complaint alleged the AJW Funds’ assets to be $876m in 2007, yet this figure was not verified, and no assets were traced. Ribotsky did not pay any monies to SEC, as ordered by court settlement, and hence the victims did not recover any of their monies. The SEC could not produce criminal charges; hence, Ribotsky did not go to jail. This case highlights sterility of law enforcement when confronted with brazen fraud.

Investors fail to monitor hedge fund managers. Fraud was detected late and not through investors. Fraud was unraveled by the economic crises of 2008. The SEC had sued the fund manager. The fund manager consented to making payment to the SEC but did not make any payments. The SEC could not bring evidence to criminally charge the fund manager.

The findings based on the case study are valuable to investors and hedge fund industry stakeholders. The findings are not based on an empirical study.

Investors need to carefully vet all hedge fund managers before allocating and funds and understand how managers make money through the claimed strategy. Also, there are limitations to law enforcement even with confronted with profound fraud schemes.

The case was built up from public sources to benefit investors considering making allocations to hedge fund managers. The public information about the case is of either legalistic or journalistic in nature.

In order to realise economies of scale in the European single market for investment funds, asset managers have typically sought to distribute a single range of investment funds into as many European markets as possible. They have therefore developed an ‘offshore’ business model: of establishing a single fund range in, say, Luxembourg or Dublin, and distributing that range throughout the EU. European legislation has evolved in support of that business model ‐ in particular, the UCITS Directive. However, persistent tax discrimination continues to undermine cross‐border sales. Tax discrimination is illegal, and the European Court of Justice has regularly ruled against countries with discriminatory fiscal regimes. The vagaries of the judicial process, though, and recent jurisprudence, may unwittingly lend strength to discrimination. Should asset managers therefore revisit their offshore business model, or should European institutions revisit the way they address issues of taxation in the Union?

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how fund managers in a non-Western country like Malaysia follow investment processes developed in the West and taught in the finance departments of universities.

This convergent interview research investigates how fund managers in Malaysia actually make their decisions, and develops a framework about their investment process.

Understanding the economy was important for the managers but was an ongoing learning process. Their analyses sometimes started bottom-up or top-down, but all followed a four-layer process. The managers did not believe the investment process could be quantified.

Convergent interviewing is meant to be a first step in a complete research program. So, future researchers could consider extending the research to different periods, different research settings in other countries like Singapore, India or Indonesia, different types of investors and different methodologies like surveys.

Practitioners should build on their experience, and understand principles of behavioral finance. Students in business schools should be taught in an experiential way, and school staff should use qualitative methods like convergent interviewing in their research projects.

Contributions centre on the article’s behavioural finance findings that experience and non-quantitative methods are the core of Malaysian investment managers’ decision-making, and on its detailed description of the unusual research methodology in finance of convergent interviewing.

The purpose of this paper is to present a cross-country qualitative comparative analysis of telecom regulatory frameworks of five countries with that of India. Adopting an institutionalist approach, this paper contributes to understanding of how institutional frameworks in these five countries are structured as compared to that in India so as to ensure division of the authority and scope of the regulator vis-a-vis that of the ministry, and the bureaucracy; financial autonomy of the regulator; redressal of grievances of individual consumers; and modification in the framework to cater to convergence of telecom and broadcasting.

The study is based on literature review of research papers, secondary research and documents published by the regulators of the five countries. The research methodology used is qualitative comparative analysis case-based research of five countries. The variables for comparison have been sourced from the World Bank Handbook for Evaluating Infrastructure Regulatory System. The researcher has adopted qualitative research method to bring forth the similarity, as well as the diversity in the regulatory setup of the five countries in comparison with India.

Analysis reveals that there is an absence of clear role definition for policy formulating body, the DoT and the regulatory body, the TRAI. The involvement of a number of bodies leads to duplication of regulatory functions in the TRAI, DoT and the Telecom Commission. Secondly, with respect to standards, compliance and spectrum management, the TEC and WPC function as divisions of DoT; however, the TRAI is entrusted with ensuring interoperability among service providers as well as spectrum management. This leads to duplication of regulatory functions and absence of a single authority. Lastly, funding of the TRAI is done through the departmental allocation given to DoT alone with no additional funds coming in the form of regulatory fees. This is seen to be specific to TRAI as other sector regulators in India have been empowered to collect fees from industry participants. The Indian framework shows two commonalities in comparison with the five countries; firstly, India has adopted self-regulation through the setting up of the Telco-consumer group-led consumer redressal process. The second similarity being convergence of the regulatory functions performed by the TRAI for the telecom as well as the information and broadcasting ministries, although the two ministries continue to function independently.

The paper furthers the understanding of the good practices in the design of telecom regulatory framework. It brings out the similarity and diversity in these frameworks. And, most importantly, it highlights limitations that the Indian telecom regulatory framework has in areas of role definition for the regulator, its autonomy and regulation of telecom-media convergence.