Advanced Applications on Bilingual Document Analysis and Processing Systems

Today, rapid digitization requires efficient bilingual non-image and image document classification systems. Although many bilingual NLP and image-based systems provide solutions for real-world problems, they primarily focus on text extraction, identification, and recognition tasks with limited document types. This article discusses a journey of these systems and provides an overview of their methods, feature extraction techniques, document sets, classifiers, and accuracy for English-Hindi and other language pairs. The gaps found lead toward the idea of a generic and integrated bilingual English-Hindi document classification system, which classifies heterogeneous documents using a dual class feeder and two character corpora. Its non-image and image modules include pre- and post-processing stages and pre-and post-segmentation stages to classify documents into predefined classes. This article discusses many real-life applications on societal and commercial issues. The analytical results show important findings of existing and proposed systems.

Dual Class Model and Shareholder Agreements: An Analysis of Italian Companies

This paper analysed the changes in ownership concentration of the Italian financial market and the recourse to dual class model and shareholder agreements by Italian listed companies in the period 2009-2020. The analysis shows that the control market did not show signs in the period that would lead to presume an increase in the contestability of our companies. The attenuation in ownership concentration, highlighted by the reduction in the value of the Shapley-Shubik index, and the increase in the average market participation did not produce an increase in the contestability of Italian listed companies since the high concentration and limited contestability of control continue to characterize their ownership structures. Findings also show less recourse by the Italian companies to the instruments of separation between ownership and control in the considered period. The reduction in the number of companies that resort to the issue of shares without voting rights and the shareholders' agreements is also reflected in the lower incidence of the capitalization of these companies compared to the market capitalization.

Pyramidal Ownership and Company Value: Evidence from Polish Listed Companies

This paper examines the effects of pyramidal ownership. Using the sample of 162 non-financial companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange during the period 2010-2014, we verify the relation between the adoption of a pyramidal structure and company value. Specifically, we show that the link between pyramidal ownership and company value is more complex than previously thought addressing the aspect of ownership concentration and dual class shares. Our results indicate that the use of pyramids is associated with a higher value measured by Tobin’s Q, supporting the efficient monitoring hypothesis. Contrary to our expectations the combination of pyramidal ownership and dual class shares is correlated with lower Q. Finally, while the adoption of a pyramid by a majority shareholder does not impact firm value, the combination of a pyramid, ownership concentration and dual class shares is associated with higher Q. This finding suggests that the blockholder ownership outweighs the possible cost of excessive disproportionate ownership and that pyramids and dual class shares have different effects on company value.

AN AHP MODEL FOR THE CHOICE OF SHIP FLAG: A CASE STUDY OF TAIWANESE SHIPOWNERS

The choice of an appropriate ship flag for the existing fleet or new-building ships is one of important issues of shipowners. The main purpose of this paper is to construct an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) model for the choice of ship flag. An application of the proposed AHP model to the case study on the ship flag choice of Taiwanese shipowners is shown in this article. The results show that the most important influential factors on the ship flag choice of Taiwanese shipowners are in order of the importance as follows: (a) crew cost, (b) incentive, (c) fiscal reason, (d) dual class expense, (e) tax-related expense, (f) PSC inspection, (g) freedom to employ foreign crew, (h) priority to transport, (i) ship registry process, (j) market consideration, (k) level of bureaucracy, and (l) law restrictions. The top four nations for Flag of Convenience (FOC) registry are in order of shipowner’s preferences as follows: (a) Panama, (b) Liberia, (c) Hong Kong, and (d) Singapore. The above findings can be a reference for the maritime departments of Taiwanese government transportation to help the maritime departments offer response strategies and policies for future development of national ship registration system.

Permitting dual class shares in the UK premium listing regime – a path to enhance rather than compromise investor protection

Unequal voting rights arrangements under dual class share structures are increasingly favoured by entrepreneurs and founders of technology companies, in order to retain a degree of control over the company that is disproportionate to their equity shareholdings. The rise of such share structures around the world has put competitive pressure on the UK Government and the country's financial regulator to relax the one share, one vote principle in the premium listing regime of the London Stock Exchange, to ensure the UK equities market remains world-leading and fit for the future development of the economy. There is, however, a long tradition of institutional investors’ distaste for dual class share structures. In fact, the near extinction of dual class listings in the UK capital markets can be largely attributed to the opposition of large British institutions. Therefore, this paper will critically discuss the conflict between the demands to attract listings from high-tech and innovative companies and concerns of a race to the bottom in the UK context. It rebuts criticisms based on investor protection and argues that if dual class companies were permitted to list in the Premium Segment, the higher level of regulatory protection provided in the premium listing regime would help enhance minority shareholder protection and shareholder engagement. The additional safeguarding measures, as we have seen from other global financial centres, would also help to restrain the potential abuse of controllers’ weighted voting power. Together with the market mechanism, permitting dual class listings in the Premium Segment should be welcomed.