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This paper aims to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the corporate governance practices in the UK. The authors adopt a case study approach and use content analysis, using internal and external media releases as well as annual reports to analyse the impact of the pandemic on governance practices.

The research design is qualitative in nature and adopts a case study approach. HSBC, an international bank, is used as the case study and a content analysis of internal and external information released after the COVID-19 outbreak is used. Themes arising from the analysis are discussed and recommendations are made.

Results from the thematic analysis show that firms must be resilient in difficult times, follow sustainable practices and are attentive to the well-being of their employees. Firms must address the adequacy of IT Infrastructure and assess the IT related risks during these times.

The pandemic crisis triggered unprecedented changes in the manner the firms are governed and managed. The recommendations made by the study have practical implications for firms who can adopt them to be make the business resilient and sustainable.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore the impact of the pandemic and analyse firms’ responses to the crisis in the corporate governance context. This study contributes to the corporate governance literature by providing insights of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

India is one of the largest IPO markets in the world. However, IPO research in the developing world is limited. The purpose of this paper is to test the performance of Indian IPOs based on sponsored vs non-sponsored issues. The authors classify the IPO sample into venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE) sponsored issues and non-sponsored ones and include key operating characteristics as performance predictors.

The dependent variable is the buy-and-hold abnormal returns. The study uses key operating characteristics such as market capitalization, net sales, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, depreciation and amortization, price-to-book, asset turnover and leverage. A cross-sectional analysis is applied to test the long-run performance.

Sponsored IPO issues convey favourable information to investors about future earnings and prospects of the firm. The findings indicate that sponsored issues and, in particular PE sponsored issues are perceived by investors as having a positive impact on the operational performance of firms that the PE firms are involved in relative to the constituents of the index and this superior operational performance over time also leads to relatively better performing share prices. There are significant differences in terms of market size, industry classification and key operating characteristics across the three groups of issues.

This study has had to deal with much smaller samples of PE and VC when compared to similar studies conducted in the developed markets such as the UK and the USA. Further robustness tests on the market performance using factor models posed a problem due to limitation of the availability of these factors.

For the capital markets investors and policy makers, this research demonstrates the increasingly important role that PE and VC funds play in the investment landscape in India. It exhibits the increasing investor confidence in the Indian capital markets.

Using a sample of Indian IPOs comprising VC sponsored and PE sponsored issues, this study analyses the performance of Indian IPOs in an emerging market setting. This study, thus, contributes to the limited IPO research undertaken in developing markets.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of leverage mimicking factor portfolios in explaining stock return variations. This paper broadens the focus of the current asset pricing literature by forming portfolios mimicking the leverage factor.

Following Fama and French's and Carhart's procedure in forming size, book‐to‐market and momentum mimicking portfolios, the authors of this paper form leverage mimicking factor portfolios to explain stock returns. A five factor model is constructed that explains the variations in stock returns better relative to the other asset pricing models including the Fama‐French‐Carhart four factor model.

The findings indicate that the leverage mimicking portfolio helps to explain stock return variations better relative to the other asset pricing models including the Fama‐French‐Carhart four factor model. Results are robust to other risk factors.

The results lead us to explore further avenues in using other risk factors in asset pricing such as future work to consider other cross‐sectional attributes such as the stochastic behaviour of earnings or profitability that might also produce common variation in stock returns. There may be other risk factors that carry a premium and thus can be used for asset pricing.

The paper's findings are important in fund management when selecting or evaluating portfolio performance. The authors introduce an additional factor that has a sound theoretical appeal and show that leverage mimicking factor portfolios provide additional information in pricing assets, both in the cross section of all shares and in different sectors.

To the best of the authors' knowledge this is the first study of the effect of leverage mimicking factor portfolios in explaining stock return variations.

This paper aims to examine the investment performance of pension funds in the UK using the three standard performance measurement models, the capital asset pricing model (CAPM), Fama-French model and the Carhart model.

The authors use the CAPS-Mellon survey data for the period 1990-2008 and employ the three standard performance measurement models, the CAPM, Fama-French model and the Carhart model in assessing the investment performance of the pension funds.

The authors show that the abnormal returns of pension funds cannot be fully explained by size, book-to-market values, market returns, momentum and the term spread. The authors find larger abnormal returns in bond than in equity portfolios and that smaller funds outperform larger funds. The paper also shows that the addition of the momentum factor does not improve on the three-factor Fama-French model. The authors find that pension funds exhibit superior performance relative to the linear factor models.

First, this study contributes to the extant literature on pension funds performance. Future research may also extend the authors' work to incorporate economic, tax, political and legal differences across the countries on the performance of pension funds. Second, due to data constraints, this study excludes the default probability of corporate bonds as an additional variable in their tests on bond returns. Future work may add the default probability as an additional variable whilst examining bond returns.

The authors believe that the findings will be considerable food for thought for fund managers who continuously attempt to explore opportunities to provide a higher return to investors.

To the authors' knowledge, this is the first comprehensive study that investigates the performance of UK equity and bond pension funds relative to standard linear factor models such as the CAPM, Fama and French, and Carhart.

We investigate the return and volatility spillovers from major UK banks to Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 (FTSE 100) index using Gaussian estimation and continuous time models as well as discrete time multivariate GARCH (MGARCH) modelling approaches. Using daily, weekly and monthly data over the period December 1999–December 2010, which includes the recent 2007–2009 global financial crisis, empirical estimates of uni- and/or bi-directional return and volatility spillovers are provided. The bivariate MGARCH results reveal strong return spillovers from the FTSE to the banks, and no return spillover from the latter to the FTSE. Nevertheless, strong bi-directional volatility transmission is verified. The continuous time analysis provides mixed evidence of feedback effects over the different models.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

The unprecedented nature of the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the critical importance of corporate governance. Organizations boasting a board of directors that provides strong, proactive leadership and continually engages with all stakeholders can strengthen the agility and resilience needed to survive a major crisis.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.