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This paper aims to examine the impact of the corporate lifecycle on the corporate governance practices of firms in the Republic of Korea.

The authors use five corporate lifecycle measures and corporate governance scores from Black et al. (2012) to estimate governance-prediction models inclusive of corporate lifecycles measures for a sample of 497 Republic of Korea firms over the 1998–2004 period.

The authors find little evidence which points to a corporate governance lifecycle for firms in the Republic of Korea. The findings suggest that factors other than firm lifecycle best explain the corporate governance practices of firms in Korea.

Using a battery of lifecycle measures and corporate governance indexes and subindexes, the authors believe this paper represents the most rigorous study yet to study the corporate governance lifecycle in an emerging market economy, namely, the Republic of Korea.

This paper aims to argue that the accounting standards’ requirements for the valuation of defined benefit pension schemes in the financial statements of scheme sponsoring companies potentially produce an artificial result which is at odds with the “faithful representation” and “relevance” objectives of these standards.

The approach is a theoretical analysis of the relevant reporting standards with the use of a practical example to demonstrate the impact where trustees adopt a hedged approach to portfolio investment.

Where a pension fund engages in asset liability matching and invests in “risk-free” assets, the term, quantity and duration/maturity of which is intended to match some or all of its scheme liabilities, the required accounting treatment potentially results in the sponsoring company’s financial statements reporting fluctuating surpluses or deficits each year which are potentially ill informed and misleading.

Pension scheme surpluses or deficits reported in the financial statements of listed companies are potentially very significant numbers; however, the dangers posed by theoretical nature of the calculation have largely gone unreported.

The authors measure the cost of equity to earnings yield differential for a sample of 2,035 non-financial firms. In a series of Logit and Tobit regressions, the authors examine if the cost of equity to earnings yield differential is related to dividend policy in the manner predicted by agency theory.

Agency theory says a firm's optimal dividend policy is partially determined by the relationship between the earnings yield and the cost of equity capital. When the cost of equity is higher (lower) than the earnings yield, firms are motivated to (not) pay dividends as this reduces the cost of capital and holding other things constant, increases corporate valuations. The authors test whether managers set dividend policies to maximize the value of the firm.

The study’s findings show that when the cost of equity is higher (lower) than earnings yield, firms are more (less) likely to be dividend payers and the payouts are higher (lower). The results are robust to the inclusion of share repurchases as an alternative to cash distributions. The study’s findings support the cost of equity hypothesis and are consistent with alternative dividend theories.

The study’s findings support the cost of equity hypothesis and are consistent with alternative dividend theories. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper testing the cost of equity hypothesis.

Service use between six and 11 years of age is reported for children adopted from Romania into UK families, and compared with that for children adopted within the UK before six months of age. Between six and 11, there had been only one adoption breakdown, and about one in ten couples experienced a marital breakdown. Apart from continuing concerns over hepatitis B carrier status in a small number of children, physical health problems were not a prominent feature. By contrast, nearly one‐third of the children from Romania placed in UK families after the age of six months received mental health services provision ‐ a rate far higher than the 11 to 15% in the groups adopted before the age of six months. Such provision was strongly related to research assessments of mental health problems and largely concerned syndromes that were relatively specific to institutional deprivation (quasi‐autism, disinhibited attachment and inattention/overactivity). There were similar differences between the UK adoptees and the adoptees from Romania entering the UK after six months of age in major special educational provision and, again, the findings showed that the provision was in accord with research assessments of scholastic achievement. The between group differences for lesser special educational provision were much smaller and there was some tendency for the early adopted groups to receive such provision for lesser degrees of scholastic problems than the children adopted from Romania who entered the UK after six months of age. The policy and practice implications of the findings are briefly discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between corporate governance and firm value at different stages of the corporate life-cycle.

The authors use two measures, commonly employed in the literature, to differentiate between “immature” and “mature” firms, and estimate separate governance-value regressions for each set of firms.

The findings suggest that it is differences in the resource/strategic governance functions, which manifest in young firms which result in differences in value across firms, all else equal. The authors find no relationship between governance and firm value for older firms. Hence, differences in the monitoring aspect of governance between mature firms are not rewarded with a value premium.

The findings imply that the strategic and resource roles of governance are “must haves” for firms since firms that score highly on these fronts are valued more highly. In contrast, differences in the monitoring aspect of governance are not rewarded, suggesting that effective monitoring is not a necessity, but rather a “nice to have”. The analysis is limited to a small sample of emerging market firms, and it would be of interest to extend this analysis to a larger and broader sample of firms.

The findings suggest that corporate governance is not valued at all stages of the corporate life-cycle.

Mentoring larger numbers of people can be a challenge. This paper seeks to show how performance support can overcome scalability barriers and cost‐effectively provide best practice and up to date help to people throughout an organization, and internationally, on a 24/7 basis and wherever and whenever they need assistance.

Performance support tools can capture and share what high performers do differently in areas in which they excel, and enable others to emulate their approaches to understanding complex situations and doing difficult tasks. The author presents drawbacks of traditional mentoring and training, and summarizes the return on investment, scalability, flexibility, and sustainability advantages of performance support.

Tools examined have yielded multiple benefits to users and commissioning organizations. Relevant and current support can be provided as and when help is needed, including out of the office and on the move.

Performance support has generated high returns on investment. Results include better understanding, higher productivity, quicker and bespoke responses, reduced costs, less stress, and evidenced compliance. Support and learning occurs at the place and time of work. Users can benefit from the advice of whoever has the most relevant and highly effective way of addressing whatever problems arise at each stage of a task.

Research underpinning performance support is summarized, and what it is and its implications are described. It is compared with e‐learning and face‐to‐face approaches. Performance support can complement, supplement or replace traditional approaches to mentoring and training, making superstar support available to larger numbers of people, as and when assistance is required.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether corporate governance changes along the corporate life-cycle.

In a sample of 205 firms from 21 emerging market countries and using a life-cycle proxy from the dividends literature, the authors use a governance-prediction model which examines whether corporate governance differs along the corporate life-cycle.

Mature firms tend to practice better overall corporate governance. Discipline and independence improve as firms mature. Firms tend to be most transparent and accountable when they are young. These findings suggest that the resource/strategy and monitoring/control governance functions are relevant but at different life-cycle stages.

In the absence of longitudinal governance data with sufficient coverage to track within-firm changes in corporate governance along the corporate life-cycle, the authors analyze differences in corporate governance between-firms at different life-cycle stages.

The authors use an alternative, yet new measure from the dividends literature to account for the firm’s position along the corporate life-cycle. With this new measure, the findings are in line with the predictions of Filatotchev et al. (2006).

The purpose of this paper is to study the valuation effects of cross listing in the USA for a panel of emerging market firms over the period from 1990 to 2003.

Using firm‐level data from Worldscope, the paper examines the valuation effects of listing in the USA for a panel of emerging market firms. Specifically, the following techniques are employed in order to control for self‐selection bias: calculate the average effect of the treatment on the treated using propensity score matching, pooled ordinary least squares with Mundlak corrections, firm‐fixed effects, and panel treatment effects models.

In line with previous researches, only those firms from high‐disclosure regimes gain from Level 2/3 listing in the USA. The gains are not immediate, but materialize once the firm has listed in the USA for at least five years. Also documented were long‐term, but not immediate valuation gains for Level 1 over‐the‐counterissues. In contrast to Level 2/3 issues, the gains are concentrated amongst firms from low‐disclosure regimes. No positive valuation effects were found for Rule 144a private placements. The results suggest that the decision on the part of the majority of firms from low‐disclosure regimes not to list as exchange traded depositary receipts is warranted.

It may have been interesting to further examine the causes of the results. For example, it would have been interesting to see how firm visibility (media and analyst coverage), liquidity, and capital issuance changed around the time of listing. However, data availability prevented such an analysis.

As opposed to standard event studies, this paper examines the effect of listing on firm value using valuation metrics, i.e. Tobin's q. Second, and unlike event studies, the techniques employed are substantially more robust to self‐selection bias.

BOTH industrial and political leaders have expressed themselves vehemently on the need for increased production. The dire consequences of failure in this respect have also been described and emphasised by company chairmen at annual shareholders' meetings. Concomitant with production problems, however, is a subject which causes much anxious discussion between the four walls of many a boardroom.

David R. Adamson has been appointed vice president of marketing and sales for de Havilland Canada. The appointment, which charges Adamson with the responsibility to steer the Canadian aircraft manufacturer's sales, sales engineering and marketing efforts worldwide, is effective immediately.