Corporate governance and earnings management: A study on the Malaysian family and non-family Owned PLCs

This study supported the claim that corporate governance (CG) mechanisms are able to overcome earnings management (EM) activities specifically from the perspective of family owned companies (FOC) and the non-family owned companies (NFOC). A total sample of 264 public listed companies (PLCs), selected based on stratified samplings, were tested. The results showed that for FOC, only number of board meetings held; while for NFOC, independence of directors, audit committee, non-duality, audit committee size, in-house internal audit function and quality differentiated auditors are the CG mechanisms that are found to be able to assist in minimizing the EM activities

Market performance of US-listed shipping IPOs

This article empirically analyses the initial and aftermarket returns for US-listed Shipping initial public offerings (IPOs). Our main objective is to fulfil the great need for the US Shipping evidence on long-run performance of IPOs. We aim to test the extent to which signalling models explain the reasons for the issuance of IPOs using the long-term price performance approach. We concentrate on a sample of 61 IPOs listed during the period 1987–2007 in four major US Stock Exchanges, computing buy-and-hold abnormal returns (BHARs) and cumulative average returns (CARs). The results show that US-listed Shipping IPOs are underpriced on initial trading day on average by only 4.44 per cent, a figure that indicates an outstanding level of maturity for the shipping sector. In the long run, Shipping IPOs listed in the United States offer 1-, 2- and 3-year holding period returns (BHAR) of 7.50, 7.73 and 3.26 per cent, respectively. The conclusion suggested by those results is that investing in the United States is not a guaranteed investment for long-term Shipping IPOs-oriented investors