Does the size of board of directors and executives affect firm performance in Malaysian listed firms?

The worldwide business practices bring more attention to corporate governance. Board of directors is also assumed as the central mechanism of corporate governance. However, whether the board composition will influence firm profitability is still questionable. This paper investigates the effect of the size of board of directors (BOD) and magnitude of executive directors on the firm profitability. Based on GMM regressions on a sample of 267 companies listed on Bursa Malaysia during 2010-2013, it is found that the board size and executive ratio have a positive impact on the firm profitability, although the coefficient value of the executive ratio considerably is greater than the coefficient of the board size. Moreover, persistent profitability is remarked by both models‎. The age of the firm factor has an insignificant relationship with firm profitability. However, leverage has a negative significant influence on the firm profitability, but the effect of liquidity on profitability is positive

Effect of stock price informativeness on timing of share repurchases

A potential presence of managerial learning hypothesis (MLH) in market timing of share repurchases is addressed by finance literature in conjunction with some growing empirical evidences of MLH’s presence to some corporate finance decision. Despite numerous past researches focusing solely the managerial market timing, the researchers contend that the success of managerial market-timing in share repurchaseswould beattributed to the effect of private information conveyed in stock price (stock price informativeness).Research finding found evidence that managers learn private information from stock price to buy back their shares with more discount.Stock price informationess could be the tool for managers to improve their market timing skill to take advantage of stock market. The contributions of this research paper are to:identify research gaps in repurchase study;discuss effect of stock price informativeness on firm stock repurchase decision; and provide empirical finding to justify the presence of MLH

Agency problem, managerial incentive and financial controlling instrument: a brief review for agenda study in Malaysia

Although the agency theory has been widely used across a variety of corporate finance concepts for the past three decades, little work has been undertaken with regard to how the agency theory could be used to explain simultaneous interrelation among internal solutions for Agency problem. In addition, no general consensus has emerged after many years of investigation and scholars can often disagree about the same empirical evidence. Among other, potential endogeneity of the agency mechanisms, as well as cultural and structural differences between developed and developing markets, has been stated to cause the complexity of corporate governance around the world. This article reviews the theoretical and empirical literature addressing causal effects of managerial incentives and financial controlling instrument due to agency problem. At the same time, the article aims to improve the understanding of how these instruments affect each other. The main part of the discussion is related to the evaluation of theoretical aspects of internal Agency solution and their interrelations, as well as the experiential studies in different countries. As such, specification of Malaysian market is surveyed separately to highlight the need for multi-theoretic process and interrelation effects in future research on corporate agency problems in the Malaysian context

Determinants of debt structure in ACE Market Bursa Malaysia: a panel data analysis

This study was conducted with the aim to examine the relevance of different financing theories namely Agency Theory, Trade-Off Theory and Pecking Order Theory to explain capital structure choices among firms in "Access, Certainty, Efficiency" (ACE) Market of Bursa Malaysia. The ACE Market is the financing source for the high-growth and technology requirements of middle-sized firms. The literature on debt policy decision making in the ACE market have been scant, leading the scholars to realize the necessity of performing more studies in this field. To further explain this issue, this study performed a quantitative analysis on a panel data sample of 60 ACE firms from 2005 to 2016. Three proxies for leverage namely total, long-term and short-term debts were examined based on the total assets and equity in six regression models. From seven variables examined in this study, findings indicated a significant relationship between warrant and debt in all models. In addition, liquidity, firm size, profitability and leverage showed significant relationship in all the models except for long-term debt. However, reputation, non-debt tax shield and interest tax shield were seen significant in some models. Trade-off Theory and Pecking Order Theory can jointly clarify determinants of firms’ capital structure in the ACE Market

Determinants of profitability in ACE market Bursa Malaysia: evidence from panel models

This study examines factors affecting a firm’s profitability, such as liquidity, firm size, lagged profitability, growth, debt, and lagged debt, among firms listed in the ACE market of Bursa Malaysia. The sample in this study comprises 60 listed companies for the period 2009-2013. Two proxies for profitability, namely ROA and ROE, were examined using static and dynamic panel model estimators. The findings of the static panel models revealed that liquidity and size have positive significant effects on ROA, while the effects of growth and debt were negatively significant. Also, firm size and sales growth had significant effects on ROE. The findings obtained from the System Generalized Method of Moments system (GMM-SYS) indicated that sales growth and leverage had negative and significant effects on ROA and ROE, while firm size was significantly and positively related to profitability. The lagged leverage factor had an insignificant relationship with profitability. However, liquidity had a significant negative influence on ROA, but the effect of liquidity on ROE was insignificant. Finally, persistent profitability was observed over time for both proxies. The findings of this study provided consideration for the capital market investors to monitor the factors related to profitability in the firms listed on the ACE market

Does the Size of Board of Directors and Executives affect Firm Performance in Malaysian Listed Firms?

The worldwide business practices bring more attention to corporate governance. Board of directors is also assumed as the central mechanism of corporate governance.  However, whether the board composition will influence firm profitability is still questionable. This paper investigates the effect of the size of board of directors (BOD) and magnitude of executive directors on the firm profitability. Based on GMM regressions on a sample of 267 companies listed on Bursa Malaysia during 2010-2013, it is found that the board size and executive ratio have a positive impact on the firm profitability, although the coefficient value of the executive ratio considerably is greater than the coefficient of the board size. Moreover, persistent profitability is remarked by both models‎. The age of the firm factor has an insignificant relationship with firm profitability. However, leverage has a negative significant influence on the firm profitability, but the effect of liquidity on profitability is positive. Keywords: ACE Market; Capital Structure; Board Size; Firm Profitability JEL Classifications: G35; G3

The impact of liquidity on the capital structure: evidence from Malaysia

For many years, liquidity of a company’s asset and its effect on the optimal debt level has been a controversial issue among scholars in finance studies. Prior studies have demonstrated that in some countries, asset liquidity increased debt level while in other countries liquid companies were less leveraged and more regularly financed by their own capital. This study investigates the effect of liquidity on the capital structure among the 300 listed companies in the Main market of Bursa Malaysia from 200 to 2013 fiscal years. Pooled OLS is applied to investigate the impact of liquidity ratios on different Debt ratios. Liquidity of a company, which is the independent variable of this study, is measured by two common ratios which are: quick ratio and current ratio. Additionally, the Debt/Equity and Debt/Asset ratios represent the capital structures based on the short-term, long-term and total debt. The results show that all the measures of liquidity have significant impacts on all the proxies of leverage. According to the results, Quick ratio has a positive effect on leverage; although, Current ratio is negatively related to leverage. Moreover, short-term debt is more influenced by liquidity compared to long-term debt

Director remuneration, family ownership and firm performance: an analysis from Malaysian listed firm for period of 2005 till 2013

This study examines the association between directors' remuneration, corporate governance structures and firm performance of 140 Malaysian listed firms which 70 firms are family firm and 70 firms are non-family. Data has been collected through annual reports in Bursa Malaysia's database from 2005 till 2013. The results show that firm performance is positively and significantly related to directors' remuneration, firm's growth and size measured by ROA, ROE and Tobin's Q. However, firms' performance in this study is not responsive to anticipated future market valuations in Stock returns. The study also finds that family ownership leads to lower performance than non-family owned firms on accounting measurement (ROA and ROE) and market measurement (Tobin's Q) after controlling company specific characteristics. The findings also reveal that role duality has no significant effect on accounting and market performance. Meanwhile the study explores that firm performance is negatively and significantly related to leverage. The findings can be useful to regulators to limit director's influence over remuneration packages especially in family firm. The study also contributes to the growing literature on executive and directors' remuneration and it provides international evidence on the effects of corporate governance reforms in recent years in influencing boardroom remuneration and ownership structure on a firm's efficiency and performance

Impacts of risk based capital regulation in Malaysian Islamic insurers (Takaful)

Risk Based Capital framework for Takaful operators (RBCT) is enforced by the Central Bank of Malaysia with the aim to ensure that Takaful operators have adequate capital to provide sound financial service. The objectives of this article is to examine the impacts of RBCT on efficiency, productivity and competitiveness level of Family Takaful Operators (FTO) and the relationship between efficiency and competitiveness in FTO in Malaysia. This study employs three methods namely Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI) and Panzar Rosse (PR) to investigate the impacts of RBC on the efficiency, productivity and competitiveness of FTO in Malaysia. The efficiency results indicate that after RBCT comes into effect, the cost efficiency has achieved higher efficient level. Although the productivity efficiency are improving, the technological systems of FTO are yet to achieve a reasonable level. From competitiveness results, the FTO are less competitive prior the implementation of RBCT, but has become more competitive after the regulation of RBCT framework. Furthermore, the more efficient of a Takaful market, the more competitive the market is. The implication of this study is that regulators need to impose prudent risk based capital regulation because it will improve the efficiency and competitiveness of Islamic insurers

Bank specific and economic factors on banks non-interest-based activities in Asia Pacific region

This study investigates bank specific and economic factors on bank non-interest based activities in Asia Pacific region banking sector over the years 2000-2015. We employ pooled OLS and panel regression to assess the bank specific and economic factors effect on bank non-interest based activities throughout 61 representative banks across Australia, Hong Kong, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand in Asia Pacific region. The empirical findings indicate that the bank specific and economic factors do have impact on banks' non-interest based activities in overall countries, developing and developed countries respectively. We also find that bank non-interest based activities also affected by subprime crisis for developed and developing countries. The findings from this study are expected to contribute significantly toward decision-making for regulators, policymakers, bank managers, investors and also to the existing knowledge on performance of the Asia Pacific banking sector