Interrelation of Capital Markets in the Context of Increased Audit Oversight in the European Union – Evidence on Third-Country Auditors

We identified a notable lack of academic literature on the issue of third-country auditors and the main contribution of our article is to address this gap. This research builds on adjacent audit oversight and capital markets literature and we extend this literature by providing evidence on third-country auditors. Specifically, we test the relationship between market capitalization and number of foreign IPOs of listed companies in representative EU countries (on one hand) and the existence of third-country auditors in those respective countries (on the other hand). Our research was performed in the second half of 2018 and is based on the latest data available. We have found that there are about 200 third-country auditors present in the public registers of audit oversight bodies in 11 EU countries. According to our network analysis, only European countries with a developed capital market have attracted third-country auditors. Most of the relationships of these developed EU capital markets are nurtured with non-EU capital markets that are at the same level of development (e.g. USA, Switzerland, Canada, Israel, and Australia). Our research hypotheses were validated: (1) the higher the market capitalization of a EU country, the higher the likelihood for the registration of third-country auditors; (2) the higher the number of foreign IPOs relative to the total IPOs on the stock exchange market, the higher the likelihood for the registration of third-country auditors.

The impact of corporate political connections and executive’s international experience on Chinese firms’ initial public offerings in the USA

Purpose Integrating social network theory with signaling theory, the purpose of this research is to examine the impact of corporate political connections and executive’s international experience on Chinese firms initial public offerings (IPOs) performance in the USA. Design/methodology/approach This study used Securities Data Company (SDC) New Issues database to identify all Chinese firms that went public in the USA between 2003 and 2014. Consistent with previous research, IPO firms excluded from the sample include merger or acquisitions, spin-offs and initial stage listed firms. The final sample size is of 142 Chinese foreign IPOs in the US markets. Findings This study finds that firms with political connections perform significantly poor than firms without political connections. It shows that US stock markets react to the signals of political connections of Chinese foreign IPOs. In response, the Chinese foreign IPOs can signal international work experience of top executives to US investors. The results show that the executives’ international work experience has significant positive relationships on foreign IPO performance of Chinese firms. Moreover, this study finds that the interaction between corporate political connections and international experience pursues positive effects on the performance of foreign IPOs. Originality/value This research intends to extend the knowledge of how corporate political connections and international work experience affects the performance of Chinese firms attempting to access US capital markets. To date, scholars have not investigated the influence of corporate political connections on the amount of capital raised by foreign IPOs.

Signaling value of top management team

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to integrate the upper echelon theory with signaling theory and examine the impact of top management team (TMT) on the initial public offering (IPO) performance of Chinese firms in the USA. Design/methodology/approach This study used Security Data Corporation (SDC) that is a central database for foreign IPOs in the USA. The authors identified 142 Chinese firms that issued stocks on the US markets between 2003 and 2014. This study used firm’s final prospectuses to collect data manually. Findings This study finds that the TMT characteristics such as functional heterogeneity and international exposure convey the positive signal of firm’s legitimacy to the US investors and increase the IPO performance. Originality/value This study extends the upper echelon perspective that has previously overlooked the signaling value of TMT characteristics in the foreign IPO studies. The top management plays an important role to the firm’s successful foreign market listing. Since China joined the WTO in 2001, a large number of Chinese firms have started IPOs in the USA, but there is a dearth of research on these firms. This study aims to contribute to the study of international business and management and describes that the TMT functional heterogeneity and international exposure have a significant role in the success of Chinese foreign IPOs.