Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Why Do Firms Pay Stock Dividends: Is it Just a Stock Split? by Xi He, Mingsheng Li, Jing Shi, Garry Twite :: SSRN

Why Do Firms Pay Stock Dividends: Is it Just a Stock Split? by Xi He, Mingsheng Li, Jing Shi, Garry Twite :: SSRN:

Abstract:
"This paper examines why firms choose to pay stock dividends. Using a sample of listed Chinese firms, we find that younger, more profitable firms, with lower leverage, high levels of retained earnings, private ownership prior to listing, investing more in fixed assets and operating in regions with lower shareholder protection are more likely to pay stock dividends. Consistent with stock dividends substituting for stock splits, our evidence indicates that the initiation of a stock dividend is associated with a significant positive market reaction and increased analyst following, suggesting that firms use stock dividends to attract analysts’ attention. In addition, the positive announcement effect for stock dividends increases with the size of the split factor, suggesting that management making use of stock dividends to keep the firm’s stock price within its acceptable trading range."
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Thursday, March 21, 2013

Deregulation of Bank Entry and Bank Failures by Krishnamurthy Subramanian, Ajay Yadav :: SSRN

Deregulation of Bank Entry and Bank Failures by Krishnamurthy Subramanian, Ajay Yadav :: SSRN:

Short version: after deregulation there are fewer bank failures. 

From the paper:

"we find that deregulation of bank entry enhances bank stability by lowering instances of bank failures. Consistent with the effects being strongest in environments where the structure of banking markets changed the most, the effects are mainly due to intra-state deregulation and in states that had unit banking laws. In falsification tests, we find no effect of the deregulation on thrift failures. Furthermore, pre-existing bank failures in a state did not determine its timing of deregulation, which assures against any reverse causal effects. The reduction in bank failures seemed to result from: benefits from greater geographic diversification; and banks becoming more efficient post deregulation."


cite: Subramanian, Krishnamurthy and Yadav, Ajay, Deregulation of Bank Entry and Bank Failures (November 18, 2012). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2219809 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2219809

Earthquakes and the Mind-Bending Laws of Markets - Bloomberg

To summarize: markets (and earthquakes) are not "normal".

Earthquakes and the Mind-Bending Laws of Markets - Bloomberg:

"Unfortunately, centuries of science and mathematics tradition, focusing on the normal statistics of things like weights, heights, and test scores, has taught us to see the world incorrectly. It was a telling moment on April 27, 2010, when Goldman Sachs Chief Financial Officer David Viniar testified to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations....

“We were seeing things,” Viniar said... “that were 25-standard-deviation events, several days in a row.”
In Gaussian mathematics, even an eight-standard-deviation event is expected only about once in the entire history of the universe. A 25-standard-deviation event should be expected about once every 10 to the 135th power years -- one followed by 135 zeros. Stocks over a single day typically change less than about 2 percent, so a movement of even 10 standard deviations means a movement of at least 20 percent. While normal statistics says this should happen once every 10 to the 22nd power days, market data show that it happens essentially every week for at least one of the few thousand stocks in the market. So perhaps we should reexamine our assumptions."

Don't be normal: markets, earthquakes, and life often have fat (and important) tails! 

Great article!  Thanks Dave for sending it to me!  (FYI Dave is a hedge fund manager who speaks to my class at least once a semester.)
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Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Spreadsheet for calculating interest payments

My MBA 604 class was asking about this, so I figured I would share it with everyone.  It is simple but shows how early payments go primarily to paying off interest. 

Sunday, March 17, 2013

California Schools Finance Upgrades by Making the Next Generation Pay - NYTimes.com

California Schools Finance Upgrades by Making the Next Generation Pay - NYTimes.com:

This past week I was at a conference where one of the presentations was on these Capital Appreciation Bonds.  Essentially while these look like zero coupon bonds to investors, they take advantage of accounting loopholes that allow the price appreciation to be catergorized at deferred interest. And hence only the loan amount is reported on financial statements not tHE total amount (debt and interest) is due.

Moreover, these are non callable and at rates which are generally higher than current market rates would suggest. 

 From NY Times:

Since 2007, hundreds of school districts and community colleges across California have used capital appreciation bonds to raise nearly $7 billion for various construction projects, according to data from the state treasurer’s office. The bonds have allowed school districts that are short on cash to finance classroom renovations and new athletic facilities while delaying payment for years, or even decades.

and later:

" And in the most expensive case yet, the Poway Unified School District borrowed $105 million to finish modernizing older school buildings, which local property owners will be paying off until four decades from now at an eventual cost of nearly $1 billion. Because payments on the bond do not start for 20 years, current school board members faced little risk of resistance from property owners."


A few comments:
  1. The PV of these is not as outrageous as the articles lead you to believe.  Yes the borrower has to pay back 10-20 times the amount borrowed, but paying back in future dollars.  This is a cardinal mistake (dollar today does not equal a dollar tomorrow!). 
  2. Genius move to say that the interest accumulates and hence keep it off the balance sheet.  Shaking my head at this one.  Also gets around rules that attempt to limit borrowing as a percentage of assessed valuation etc.  I don't like it as it keeps taxpayers uninformed as to the true amount of their liabilities, but none-the-less I must recognize the creativity and genius to get around the stated rules. 
  3. The accounting rule has to be amended.
  4. It is a near perfect example of future generations having to pay off our debts.   
  5. As general obligation bonds, the school district is not allowed to default.  In the event of a default their will be a special assessment (think tax) that will be used to pay off the loan.  (at the conference the speaker cited examples from the 1930s (Great Depression) where cities closed down and were foreclosed as a result failure to pay off general obligation muni debt.
  6. Look for a more on this coming soon!  (Several large media outlets reportedly doing pieces on this from across the US.)
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Friday, March 08, 2013

How Pervasive is Corporate Fraud? by I.J. Dyck, Adair Morse, Luigi Zingales :: SSRN

How Pervasive is Corporate Fraud? by I.J. Dyck, Adair Morse, Luigi Zingales :: SSRN:

Abstract:
"We estimate what percentage of firms engage in fraud and the economic cost of fraud. Our estimates are based on detected frauds, and frauds that we infer are started but are not caught. To identify the ‘iceberg’ of undetected fraud we take advantage of an exogenous shock to the incentives for fraud detection: Arthur Andersen’s demise, which forces companies to change auditors. By assuming that the new auditor will clean house, and examining the change in fraud detection by new auditors, we infer that the probability of a company engaging in a fraud in any given year is 14.5%. We validate the magnitude of this estimate using alternative methods. We estimate that on average corporate fraud costs investors 22 percent of enterprise value in fraud-committing firms and 3 percent of enterprise value across all firms."

Thursday, March 07, 2013

Swiss vote for tough curbs on executive pay - Europe - Al Jazeera English

Swiss vote for tough curbs on executive pay - Europe - Al Jazeera English:

Shareholder voting on pay that matters?  This will be interesting to watch.  

"Swiss citizens voted to impose some of the world's strictest controls on executive pay, forcing public companies to give shareholders a binding vote on compensation, initial result projections showed.

Claude Longchamp, of pollsters Gfs Bern, told Swiss state television on Sunday early returns in a referendum showed 68 percent backed plans for shareholders to veto executive pay and for a ban on big rewards for new and departing managers."

Wednesday, March 06, 2013

SEC Speech: Harnessing Tomorrow’s Technology for Today’s Investors and Markets, by Chairman Elisse Walter, on February 19, 2013

High Frequency trading has been in the news (and in class) quite a bit lately.  While high frequency trading seems to have peaked, it is still in the news (For example Warren Buffett sort of talked about it, regulators in the US and Germany are looking into it).   So a short "lesson"

So from Wikipedia:
"High-frequency trading (HFT) is the use of sophisticated technological tools and computer algorithms to trade securities on a rapid basis.[1][2][3]
HFT usually uses proprietary trading strategies that are carried out by computers. Unlike regular investing, an investment position in HFT may be held for only seconds, or fractions of a second (though sometimes it may extend to longer), with the computer trading in and out of positions thousands or tens of thousands of times a day.[4"

An interesting 60-Minute piece:




Recently SEC Chairman Elisse Walter discussed this and the SEC's moves in the area:

SEC Speech: Harnessing Tomorrow’s Technology for Today’s Investors and Markets, by Chairman Elisse Walter, on February 19, 2013:

"...last year, the SEC put in motion two initiatives that will dramatically increase the quality and quantity of the data we receive and improve our understanding of the way today’s markets function. ...MIDAS stands for Market Information Data Analytics System. It captures all orders posted on the national exchanges, all modification and cancellation of those orders, all trade execution of those orders, and all off-exchange executions....

It can help us monitor and understand mini-flash crashes, or pick up on possibly troublesome or illegal behavior, for example, by noting excessive cancellations of message traffic. But what’s critical in the context of long-term investor protection is that it will give us dramatically better insight into the function of a market that moves many millions of dollars in millionths of a second. It will be like the first time scientists used high-speed photography and strobe lighting to see how a hummingbird’s wings actually move. This information has the capacity to give regulators — as well as academics and other stakeholders — unprecedented insight into the way markets work today"


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China's real estate bubble - 60 Minutes - CBS News

China's real estate bubble - 60 Minutes - CBS News

Tuesday, March 05, 2013

Heinz CEO Johnson Would Get $200 Million in Post-Berkshire Exit - Yahoo! Finance

Heinz CEO Johnson Would Get $200 Million in Post-Berkshire Exit - Yahoo! Finance:

"H.J. Heinz Co. (HNZ) Chief Executive Officer Bill Johnson could receive more than $200 million should he exit after Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A) and Jorge Paulo Lemann's 3G Capital Inc. buy the ketchup maker.

Johnson, 64, would get "Golden Parachute Compensation" including $56 million in cash, equity, bonuses and other benefits, the Pittsburgh-based company said in a regulatory filing. Other shares under Johnson's control are worth almost $100 million, while his vested deferred compensation account totals $57 million."
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