Governance Through Threat: Does Short Selling Improve Internal Governance?

July 16, 2013 Leave a comment

Governance Through Threat: Does Short Selling Improve Internal Governance?

Massimo Massa INSEAD – Finance

Bohui Zhang The University of New South Wales – School of Banking and Finance; Financial Research Network (FIRN)

Hong Zhang INSEAD – Finance

July 9, 2013
INSEAD Working Paper No. 2013/83/FIN

Abstract: 
We explore the relationship between internal governance and the disciplining mechanisms created by the threat of short selling (i.e. “short-selling potential”). We argue that the presence of short selling increases the cost of agency problems for shareholders and incentivizes them to improve internal governance. Our stock-level tests across 23 developed countries during 2003-2009 confirm that the threat of short selling significantly enhances the quality of internal governance. This effect is stronger for financially constrained firms and more pronounced in countries with weak institutional environments. The governance impact of short selling leads to an improvement in firms’ operating performance.

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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