Danielle Sougné

Institutional Investors, information asymmetry and stock market liquidity in France

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of institutional investors’ ownership and type on information asymmetry and stock market liquidity in France. Design/methodology/approach - – The sample includes 162 French-listed firms from 2007 to 2009. The methodology relies on linear regressions using the method of ordinary least square. Before examining the interaction between liquidity and institutional investors, the authors check for the existence of the endogeneity problem by applying the Durbin-Wu-Hausman test of Davidson and MacKinnon (1993). The results of the endogeneity test show that institutional investors’ ownership and stock liquidity are endogenous. A simultaneous equation model using the double least square method is then tested to address this problem. Findings - – The findings show that the proportion of institutional investors has a positive and significant effect on stock-market liquidity, which confirms the signal theory and trading hypothesis. These investors perform high trading activity which favorably affects market liquidity. The results also show that pension funds improve stock liquidity. This result suggests that pension funds manage huge assets decreasing transaction costs and improving liquidity. They display a positive signal to the market about more transparency and a low level of informational asymmetry. Practical implications - – These results highlight the institutional investors’ role in defining the level of liquidity on the French market. The findings also stress the relevance of developing institutional investors’ demand for the Paris market in order to better assess firm value, protect minority ownership and improve market liquidity. Originality/value - – In the French institutional setting, institutional investors act as a control device since minority shareholder interests are less protected than in Anglo-American counterparts. This result highlights the significant role of institutional investors in corporate governance structures and on financial markets. Their presence is a guarantee for minority interest protection and for more liquid stocks.

Financial development and economic growth: an empirical investigation of the role of banks and institutional investors

This article gives a new light on the finance-growth nexus through the investigation of the role of institutional investors as providers of risk diversification in the process of economic growth. We make use of panel cointegration techniques to study the potential long-run relationship between economic growth, banking development and institutional investors in six Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Our results highlight some heterogeneity in the long-run relationship between financial development and growth. Institutional investors are shown to support long-run economic growth in only two countries. We also report a negative long-run relationship between both indicators of financial development.

The Market Timing Skills of Hedge Funds during the Financial Crisis

The performance of a market timer can be measured through the Treynor and Mazuy (1966) model, provided the regression alpha is properly adjusted by using the cost of an option-based replicating portfolio, as shown by Hübner (2010). We adapt this approach to the case of multi-factor models with positive, negative or neutral betas. This new approach is applied on a sample of hedge funds whose managers are likely to exhibit market timing skills. We stick to funds that post weekly returns, and analyze three hedge funds strategies in particular: long-short equity, managed futures, and funds of hedge funds. We analyze a particular period during which the managers of these funds are likely to magnify their presumed skills, namely around the financial and banking crisis of 2008. Some funds adopt a positive convexity as a response to the US market index, while others have a concave sensitivity to the returns of an emerging market index. Thus, we identify “positive�?, “mixed�? and “negative�? market timers. A number of signs indicate that only positive market timers manage to acquire options below their cost, and deliver economic significant performance, even in the midst of the financial crisis. Negative market timers, by contrast, behave as if they were forced to sell options without getting the associated premium. We interpret this behavior as a possible result of fire sales, leading them to liquidate positions under the pressure of redemption orders, and inducing negative performance adjusted for market timing.