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The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between national societal values and corporate governance in emerging markets.

The sample is comprised of 511 firm-year observations representing firms from 22 emerging markets. The authors regress sample firms’ corporate governance ratings, reported by Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia (CLSA), on national societal value scores (Hofstede, 1980 variables for primary analysis and Schwartz, 1994 variables for sensitivity tests) and firm-level and country-level control variables.

The authors find that national societal values are associated with corporate governance in emerging markets. Corporate governance is strong in firms from individualistic societies, and weak in firms from uncertainty avoiding and masculine cultures.

The authors extend the stream of literature that has established the link between formal institutions and corporate governance. The authors also extend the literature that examines how societal values influence corporate practices in emerging markets.

The results suggest that informal institutions, in addition to formal ones, shape corporate governance in emerging markets. Corporate stakeholders need to be aware of the different societal values of each market and develop specific strategic plans that best suit both formal and informal institutions.

The findings suggest that national societal values need to be considered in cross-country research on corporate governance. The results should also be of interest to policy makers advocating for or against global governance standards.

Prior research (e.g Holthausen and Leftwich, 1986) has found that firms’ stock prices react negatively to announcements of downgrades of their bond ratings. Our study examines whether stock prices react negatively to downgrades because the rating agency conveys adverse private information about the firm through the downgrade (the information provision hypothesis) and/or because the downgrade imposes significant costs on the firm (the cost imposition hypothesis). The results of a cross‐sectional model support both hypotheses. Specifically, we find that firms’ stock returns are positively related with their institutional stockholdings and negatively related with their debt‐to‐equity ratios. This suggests that the rating agency is an important information provider for firms with low institutional stockholdings, and that the downgrades significantly impact firms’ borrowing costs.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the stock prices of Ernst & Young's (E&Y's) audit clients reacted to the sale of the accounting firm's consulting unit to Cap Gemini. The study is motivated by the debate on how the provision of non‐audit services by auditors affects investor perceptions of auditor independence.

This paper uses the event study approach and examines market model prediction errors around relevant dates.

E&Y client firms' mean and median abnormal stock returns are significantly positive for two events, the approval of the sale by E&Y's partners, and the approval of the transaction by Cap Gemini stockholders.

This study is limited to one major audit firm for reasons discussed in the paper.

This study offers evidence on investor perceptions of auditor independence without relying on an earnings management model as is common in the literature. This study's evidence suggests that investors view the separation of auditing and consulting favorably.