Amal Hamrouni

Board director disciplinary and cognitive influence on corporate value creation

Purpose This paper aims to investigate board director disciplinary and cognitive influence on corporate value creation. Design/methodology/approach Fixed-effect regressions are used to check whether gender diversity, education, independence and size of the board of directors affect measures of corporate value creation. Findings The empirical results show that corporate value creation is positively influenced by the cross effect of the board independence and the presence of women. They also point out a positive impact of the cross effect of board independence and management education. They reveal that the board of directors contributes significantly to corporate value creation, particularly when there is a mix of independent, female and management-qualified directors. Originality/value The evidence presented and discussed in this paper should be of interest to managers and regulators. The methodological approach and the empirical results extend the existing literature. They enrich the limited empirical research devoted to this theme, especially in a continental European context, i.e. France. They shed light on the effect of board of directors’ disciplinary and cognitive influence on corporate value creation.

HOW DOES CORPORATE VOLUNTARY DISCLOSURE AFFECT ASYMMETRIC INFORMATION AND ADVERSE SELECTION

This paper investigates whether the extent of corporate voluntary disclosure mitigates asymmetric information and adverse selection in the Euronext Paris stock exchange. We apply a disclosure index as a proxy for the extent of voluntary disclosure and use different spread measures to estimate both asymmetric information and adverse selection. Our findings show a negative relationship between the disclosure index and asymmetric information and adverse selection proxies. An analysis of sub-indexes provides additional mixed results. Several asymmetric information measures are negatively related to the volume of financial, non-financial and voluntary governance information in corporate annual reports. Nevertheless, the effect of strategic information volume is statistically significant only for effective bid-ask spreads. On the whole, these results are consistent with the view that high corporate voluntary disclosure is associated with narrow spreads and low adverse selection costs.

Voluntary information disclosure and sell-side analyst coverage intensity

Purpose - This paper aims to investigate whether a high level of voluntary disclosure attracts sell-side analysts. In other words, the authors check whether the number of analysts following a given firm increases with the extent of voluntary information that corporate managers provide in annual reports. Design/methodology/approach - The paper relies on regression analyses to study the relationship between the level of coverage by sell-side analysts and the extent of voluntary disclosure for a sample of 155 non-financial firms listed on the Euronext Paris stock exchange and members of the SBF 250 index. Findings - The empirical results show that the number of analysts following a given firm increases with the extent of voluntary disclosure. Consequently, the authors conclude that analysts are interested in the volume of information provided voluntarily by corporate managers. Their interest varies across the voluntary-information categories (strategic, financial, non-financial and governance) disclosed in annual reports. Originality/value - This study extends previous research by investigating sell-side analysts’ preferences in terms of voluntary-information categories in annual reports. A better understanding of the effects of sub-categories of voluntary information is useful to corporate managers wishing to meet market expectations and attract sell-side analysts. In fact, the authors verify how each category of disclosed information (strategic, financial, non-financial and governance) affects the analyst coverage intensity. In addition, the authors apply our study in the rather interesting empirical setting that is France, which is characterized by a low investor protection and a large number of active analysts.