Essays on corporate governance: SRI investing, skill heterogeneity on firm performance and value creation through M&As

This thesis empirically investigates three prominent issues in the fieldof corporate governance. The first studydelves into the areaof Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The emergence and tremendous growth of socially responsible investing (SRI), along with the ambiguity which surrounds its application, make SRI-labelled funds ideal candidates for utilising “window dressing” strategies to attract assets from interested investors. Iintroduce a novel two-dimensional taxonomy of SRI funds, simultaneously based on their self-proclaimed label of SRI as well as the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) value that emanates from their actual holdings. Ifind that across the different SRI fund categories, "Greenwashers" attract the lowest amount of funds despite achieving comparable performance. ESG value exhibits a secondary stabilising effect on fund flow persistence across all funds.In the second study, I focuson the skills of directors and I examine their effect on firm performance. To that end, Iexploit arecent Regulation amendment to create a novel, hand-collected dataset of directors' skills for all SPXDD constituents over the period CDED-CDEY. Then, Iinvestigatehow these skills cluster at a board and at a director level. Results evincethat some boards have directors with more diverse skillsets. However, skill diversity does not appear to correlate with firm value. I findlimited evidence of a positive linkbetweenskill diversity andROE. Yet, boards exhibit a secondary predilection towards technological prowess. It appears that the presence of a technology-aptboardroom is positively linked with the firm'sTobin's Q.The final empirical chapter studiesthe impactof director skills on M&As. Ifind that acquirers that exhibit more commonality in theskillsets of their directors, are associated with positive and statistically significant abnormal returns. However,directors and CEOs with more (less) skills appear to be linked with worse (better) acquisition performance. Iconsider two possible explanations for this counterintuitive finding;CEO overconfidence and window-dressing. I find evidence of the latter.Firms with bad corporate governanceappear to inflate theskills of their board membersin the proxy statements that share with their shareholdersbefore the annual elections of their directors

Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Financial Performance in Cultural and Entertainment Industry: Evidence from Chinese Listed Companies

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Cultural and entertainment industry has entered a phase of rapid development in China, and with it comes some problems on regulating its derivatives and also raising social concern about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in Chinese cultural and entertainment industry. In addition, CSR has drawn more and more attention in developing countries even though its development lags behind developed countries at current stage. Meanwhile, as many studies stated, poor performance in CSR will have negative effects on Corporate Financial Performance (CFP). Therefore, the purpose of this study is to study on the relationship between CSR and CFP in Chinese cultural and entertainment industry. The study adopts an empirical study to examine the correlation between CSR and CFP. There will be two regression models used to examine the linkage between the overall CSR performance and CFP, and the relationship between specific CSR elements and CFP, respectively. Five CSR elements: shareholder responsibility, employee responsibility, supplier, customer and consumer responsibility, environmental responsibility and social responsibility are used as independent variables, and five financial indicators: ROE, ROA, EPS, the growth rate of main operating, the expansion rate of total assets are adopted as dependent variables to measure companies’ profitability and growth ability. After doing the analysis of the results, the author finds there is a significant positive relationship between CSR and companies’ profitability, however, CSR has no significant effects on companies’ growth ability. Even though the study is limited by the size of sample, it is the first study that examines the relationship between CSR and CFP in Chinese cultural and entertainment industry. It may help increase the understanding of the relationship between CSR and financial performance in Chinese cultural and entertainment industry.Peer reviewe

Development of the CMS detector for the CERN LHC Run 3

International audienceSince the initial data taking of the CERN LHC, the CMS experiment has undergone substantial upgrades and improvements. This paper discusses the CMS detector as it is configured for the third data-taking period of the CERN LHC, Run 3, which started in 2022. The entire silicon pixel tracking detector was replaced. A new powering system for the superconducting solenoid was installed. The electronics of the hadron calorimeter was upgraded. All the muon electronic systems were upgraded, and new muon detector stations were added, including a gas electron multiplier detector. The precision proton spectrometer was upgraded. The dedicated luminosity detectors and the beam loss monitor were refurbished. Substantial improvements to the trigger, data acquisition, software, and computing systems were also implemented, including a new hybrid CPU/GPU farm for the high-level trigger

Development of the CMS detector for the CERN LHC Run 3

International audienceSince the initial data taking of the CERN LHC, the CMS experiment has undergone substantial upgrades and improvements. This paper discusses the CMS detector as it is configured for the third data-taking period of the CERN LHC, Run 3, which started in 2022. The entire silicon pixel tracking detector was replaced. A new powering system for the superconducting solenoid was installed. The electronics of the hadron calorimeter was upgraded. All the muon electronic systems were upgraded, and new muon detector stations were added, including a gas electron multiplier detector. The precision proton spectrometer was upgraded. The dedicated luminosity detectors and the beam loss monitor were refurbished. Substantial improvements to the trigger, data acquisition, software, and computing systems were also implemented, including a new hybrid CPU/GPU farm for the high-level trigger

Development of the CMS detector for the CERN LHC Run 3

International audienceSince the initial data taking of the CERN LHC, the CMS experiment has undergone substantial upgrades and improvements. This paper discusses the CMS detector as it is configured for the third data-taking period of the CERN LHC, Run 3, which started in 2022. The entire silicon pixel tracking detector was replaced. A new powering system for the superconducting solenoid was installed. The electronics of the hadron calorimeter was upgraded. All the muon electronic systems were upgraded, and new muon detector stations were added, including a gas electron multiplier detector. The precision proton spectrometer was upgraded. The dedicated luminosity detectors and the beam loss monitor were refurbished. Substantial improvements to the trigger, data acquisition, software, and computing systems were also implemented, including a new hybrid CPU/GPU farm for the high-level trigger

Precision measurement of the structure of the CMS inner tracking system using nuclear interactions

The structure of the CMS inner tracking system has been studied using nuclear interactions of hadrons striking its material. Data from proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV recorded in 2015 at the LHC are used to reconstruct millions of secondary vertices from these nuclear interactions. Precise positions of the beam pipe and the inner tracking system elements, such as the pixel detector support tube, and barrel pixel detector inner shield and support rails, are determined using these vertices. These measurements are important for detector simulations, detector upgrades, and to identify any changes in the positions of inactive elements

Development of the CMS detector for the CERN LHC Run 3

Since the initial data taking of the CERN LHC, the CMS experiment has undergone substantial upgrades and improvements. This paper discusses the CMS detector as it is configured for the third data-taking period of the CERN LHC, Run 3, which started in 2022. The entire silicon pixel tracking detector was replaced. A new powering system for the superconducting solenoid was installed. The electronics of the hadron calorimeter was upgraded. All the muon electronic systems were upgraded, and new muon detector stations were added, including a gas electron multiplier detector. The precision proton spectrometer was upgraded. The dedicated luminosity detectors and the beam loss monitor were refurbished. Substantial improvements to the trigger, data acquisition, software, and computing systems were also implemented, including a new hybrid CPU/GPU farm for the high-level trigger.Since the initial data taking of the CERN LHC, the CMS experiment has undergone substantial upgrades and improvements. This paper discusses the CMS detector as it is configured for the third data-taking period of the CERN LHC, Run 3, which started in 2022. The entire silicon pixel tracking detector was replaced. A new powering system for the superconducting solenoid was installed. The electronics of the hadron calorimeter was upgraded. All the muon electronic systems were upgraded, and new muon detector stations were added, including a gas electron multiplier detector. The precision proton spectrometer was upgraded. The dedicated luminosity detectors and the beam loss monitor were refurbished. Substantial improvements to the trigger, data acquisition, software, and computing systems were also implemented, including a new hybrid CPU/GPU farm for the high-level trigger