Toward a Controlling Shareholder Safe Harbor

2004 ◽  
Vol 90 (8) ◽  
pp. 2245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven M. Haas
2019 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Cazier ◽  
Kenneth J. Merkley ◽  
John S. Treu

ABSTRACTPrior research finds that positive tone in firms' qualitative disclosures increases the risk of shareholder lawsuits. However, federal securities laws provide a safe harbor intended to shield firms' forward-looking statements from legal liability. One implication of this safe harbor is that litigation risk potentially varies between qualitative forward- and non-forward-looking statements. Consistent with this implication, we find that positive tone in forward-looking qualitative statements is significantly less related to the likelihood of subsequent litigation than is positive tone in non-forward-looking qualitative statements. On average, we fail to find a significant association between qualitative forward-looking statements and subsequent litigation. We do find evidence, however, that positive tone in qualitative forward-looking statements relates positively to subsequent litigation in two U.S. circuits in which court rulings reduced safe harbor protections for forward-looking statements. Overall, our results are consistent with the safe harbor effectively shielding firms' qualitative forward-looking statements from litigation risk.


2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 31-55
Author(s):  
Chiraz Ben Ali ◽  
Sabri Boubaker ◽  
Michel Magnan

SUMMARY This paper examines whether multiple large shareholders (MLS) affect audit fees in firms where the largest controlling shareholder (LCS) is a family. Results show that there is a negative relationship between audit fees and the presence, number, and voting power of MLS. This is consistent with the view that auditors consider MLS as playing a monitoring role over the LCS, mitigating the potential for expropriation by the LCS. Therefore, our evidence suggests that auditors reduce their audit risk assessment and audit effort and ultimately audit fees in family controlled firms with MLS. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text. JEL Classifications: G32; G34; M42; D86.


2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
So Gun Hong ◽  
Ravi Chandra Yada ◽  
Kyujoo Choi ◽  
Arnaud Carpentier ◽  
T. Jake Liang ◽  
...  

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 630-637 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amita Tiyaboonchai ◽  
Helen Mac ◽  
Razveen Shamsedeen ◽  
Jason A. Mills ◽  
Siddarth Kishore ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xi Zhong ◽  
He Wan ◽  
Qiuping Peng

PurposeThe authors analyze the effects of controlling shareholders' stock pledging on firms' strategic change behavior, and investigate how the balance of power between shareholders and analyst coverage moderates those effects.Design/methodology/approachEmploying fixed effects models, the authors test hypotheses based on Chinese listed company data from 2011 to 2017.FindingsControlling shareholders' stock pledges has a negative effect on strategic change. As the balance of power among shareholders and/or analyst coverage increases, it mitigates the effect of controlling shareholder stock pledges on strategic change. In particular, the balance of power between shareholders and analyst coverage weakened the relationship between controlling shareholder stock pledges and strategic change. Lastly, after distinguishing family from nonfamily firms, the authors discovered that these findings only held for family firms.Originality/valueThis study makes important contributions to strategic change, stock pledge and family firm literature, and also provides guidance on firms' strategic change practices.


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