Premium
Do staggered board elections affect firms' financing costs? Evidence from China
Author(s) -
Yugang Chen,
Yu Liu,
Shahab Yasir,
Yuan Zhou
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
international journal of finance and economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.505
H-Index - 39
eISSN - 1099-1158
pISSN - 1076-9307
DOI - 10.1002/ijfe.1897
Subject(s) - corporate governance , voting , finance , equity (law) , business , china , equity financing , debt , debt financing , charter , external financing , economics , monetary economics , accounting , archaeology , politics , political science , law , history
As an important provision in a company's charter, the requirement of staggered board elections can help management protect themselves or protect the interests of investors. We examined a unique dataset of Chinese listed firms from the period of 2004–2014, and our findings are twofold. First, we find that the establishment of a staggered board in a company's article of association increases the equity financing costs as well as the debt financing costs. This result is in line with management defense hypothesis that staggered boards are an overprotection for the management. Second, our results show that a cumulative voting system plays an effective role in reducing the impact of a staggered board on a firm's financing costs. This moderating impact is higher for the debt financing costs and lower for the equity financing costs. The result shows that “debt investors” value a cumulative voting system because of its control of the corporate operations and board activities, while “equity investors” believe staggered board elections have a larger influence on the corporate governance.