Carlos López-Gutiérrez

Investment decisions of companies in financial distress

This paper analyzes the influence of financial distress on the investment behavior of companies. The analysis includes companies from Germany, Canada, Spain, France, Italy, UK and USA, which cover a wide spectrum of different institutional environments. The methodology used is panel data estimation using the Generalized Method of Moments (System-GMM), thereby allowing control of both unobservable heterogeneity and the problems of endogeneity in explanatory variables. The results show that the influence of financial distress on investment is different according to the investment opportunities available to companies. So, companies in difficulties with fewer opportunities have the greatest propensity to under-invest, while firms in difficulties with better opportunities do not present different investment behavior than healthy companies.

Corporate Social Responsibility in the Media: A Content Analysis of Business News in Spain

ABSTRACT This article presents the findings of a theoretically driven content analysis of the coverage of corporate social responsibility by Expansión, the leading Spanish business journal, in a 1-year time frame. The goal of the article is to help companies understand how they can take advantage of media coverage of CSR by identifying the major stakeholder groups and CSR issues discussed in business news, the positive/negative/mixed tone of the coverage, and the differences that exist in media CSR discourse depending on the industry under scrutiny. The findings are explained under the salience framework of stakeholder theory.

An empirical analysis of the relationship between the information quality of CSR reporting and reputation among publicly traded companies in Spain

Purpose Supported by the principles of the legitimacy theory, the purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship that exists between the information quality of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting provided by the most liquid companies operating in the Spanish Stock Market and their corporate reputation. Design/methodology/approach Three regression models are tested with panel data collected for a sample of the 35 most liquid companies operating in the Spanish Stock Market between 2004 and 2014. Findings The findings show that two axes of information quality (i.e. content and management systems) should be necessarily controlled by companies in order to improve their corporate reputation through their CSR reporting. The content axis refers to the compliance of CSR reports with the provision of qualitative, quantitative, and evaluative information concerning the impacts of the CSR of the company on society and the environment. The management systems axis refers to the compliance of CSR reports with the disclosure of details about the policies, plans, and actions that companies implement to assure an effective management of CSR initiatives. Originality/value Previous literature exploring the relationship between corporate reporting and reputation has frequently focused on either the impact of the quantity of financial and CSR information reported by companies and the role of information quality, but only in reference to a number of specific themes (environment, customers) and not to the full range of information covered by CSR reports. The authors of this paper extend on previous academic literature by empirically evaluating the relationship between two dimensions of the information quality of CSR reporting (content and management systems) and the corporate reputation of companies operating in the Spanish Stock Market.

Managerial Response to Mutual Fund Performance in the Spanish Market: An Agency Approach

The mutual fund market has grown so much over the last decade that we now have a real need for a criterion to evaluate portfolio managers. The mutual fund environment is characterized by asymmetric information, which makes analysing performance difficult, and promotes conflicts of interests about the use of market signals and control mechanisms to minimize agency costs.

Analysis of Mutual Fund Demand in the Spanish Market

The globalization of today’s economy has led to a renewed interest in financial systems that can explicate the differences in the evolution of market-based and bank-based systems.1 In market-based systems, a legal separation is made between the typical commercial banking activity of resource-building, loan-granting and credit risk, and the development of activities such as stock-brokerage operations, wealth management, and assessing takeovers and acquisitions, which are carried out by other entities known as business or investment banks.