scholarly journals An empirical analysis of “corporate Italy”: Legal entities, financial and ownership structure and corporate governance 2004-2012

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 117-129
Author(s):  
Carlo Bellavite Pellegrini

This research has a twofold target. For one extent it embraces on a wider historical period previous analyzed related to the innovative bodies of law introduced by the Vietti’s Reform in 2004, providing an overall evidence related to the Italian corporate system, ranging from consistency and dynamics of the different forms of legal entities, to their corporate governance and ownership structures. For another extent it proposes completely new data about other patterns of “Corporate Italy” which have never been enquired in a systematic way before. The paper provides a wide analysis of the ownership structures of unlisted joint stock Italian companies and of the limited liability companies describing the number of all the M&A deals or corporations’ transformation or liquidation during 2012.

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 413-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mamdouh Abdulaziz Saleh Al-Faryan ◽  
Everton Dockery

In this paper we examine the ownership structure of 169 firms listed on the Saudi Arabian stock market from 2008 to 2014. The analysis uses the testing methodology described by Demsetz and Lehn (1985) to examine the effects of firm and market instability on Saudi ownership structure and additionally, the effect of systematic regulation that imposes constraints on the behaviour of the selected listed firms. We find evidence, for the majority of the ownership structures considered, in favour of the view that firm size, regulation and instability affects ownership structure. The results suggest that the size variable has a positive effect on ownership concentration. Our analysis also shows that instability had some effect on ownership concentration and structure when using the non-linear specification, particularly when using firm specific instability, albeit the effect was stronger when the instability measure was accounting profit returns. Lastly, there is evidence that government-owned firms were mostly affected by regulation while diffused owned firms were affected most by instability than non-government owned firms.


Author(s):  
Xu_Dong Ji ◽  
Kamran Ahmed ◽  
Wei Lu

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of corporate governance and ownership structures on earnings quality in China both prior and subsequent to two important corporate reforms: the code of corporate governance (CCG) in 2002 and the split share structure reform (SSR) in 2005. Design/methodology/approach – This study utilises informativeness of earnings (earnings response coefficient), conditional accounting conservatism and managerial discretionary accruals to assess earnings quality using 12,267 firm-year observations over 11 years from 2000 to 2010. Further, two dummy variables for measuring the changes of CCG and SSR are employed to estimate the effects of CCG and SSR reforms on earnings quality via OLS regression. Findings – This study finds that the promulgation of the CCG in 2002 has had a positive impact, but the SSR reform in 2005 has had little effect on listed firms’ earnings quality in China. These results hold good after controlling for a number of ownership, governance and other variables and estimating models with multiple measures of earnings’ quality. Research limitations/implications – Future research could focus on how western style corporate governance mechanisms have been constrained by the old management systems and governmental dominated ownership structures in Chinese listed firms. The conclusion is that simply coping Western corporate governance model is not suitable for every country. Practical implications – The results will assist Chinese regulators in improving reporting quality, ownership structure and governance mechanisms in China. The results will help international investors better understand quality of financial information in China. Originality/value – This is the first to our knowledge that addresses the effects of major governance and ownership reforms together on accounting earnings quality and, thus, makes a significant contribution on understanding the effect of regulatory reforms on improving earnings quality. In doing so, it also indirectly assesses the effectiveness of western-style corporate governance mechanisms introduced in China.


2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Assunta Baldini ◽  
Giovanni Liberatore

Intellectual capital (IC) as well as disclosure of information on IC has in recent years gained importance. IC is the key issue in strengthening a firm’s competitive position and in achieving its objectives. The purpose of this study is to investigate some determinants of the disclosure of IC in annual reports. In particular the aim of this research is to analyse the internal mechanisms of corporate governance (board composition, role duality, ownership structure, auditor type and size of audit committee), which influence the intellectual capital disclosure in corporate annual reports for a sample of all listed Italian firms at 31st December 2010. It has been used a disclosure index as a dependent variable, (ICD), and the method used to measure it is content analysis.


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