Francois Degeorge

Earnings Management to Exceed Thresholds

Investors are keenly interested in financial reports of earnings because earnings provide important information for investment decisions. Thus, executives who are monitored by investors and directors face strong incentives to manage earnings. We introduce consideration of behavioural/institutional thresholds for earnings in this mix of incentives and governance. A model illustrates how thresholds induce specific types of earnings management. Empirical explorations find clear support for earnings management to exceed each of the three thresholds that we consider: positive profits, sustain-recent-performance, and meet-market-expectations. The thresholds are hierarchically ranked. The future performance of firms that possibly boost earnings to just cross a threshold appears to be poorer than that of less suspect control groups.

Analyst coverage, earnings management and financial development: An international study

Abstract Using data from 21 countries, this paper analyzes the relation among analyst coverage, earnings management and financial development in an international context. We document that the effectiveness of financial analysts as monitors increases with a country’s financial development (FD). We find that in high-FD countries, increased within-firm analyst coverage results in less earnings management. Such is not the case in low-FD countries. Our results are economically significant and robust to reverse causality checks. Our findings illustrate one mechanism through which financial development mitigates the cost of monitoring firms and curbs earnings management.

Auctioned IPOs: the U.S. Evidence

Between 1999 and 2007, WR Hambrecht has completed 19 IPOs in the U.S. using an auction mechanism. We analyze investor behavior and mechanism performance in these auctioned IPOs using detailed bidding data. The existence of some bids posted at high prices suggests that some investors (mostly retail) try to free-ride on the mechanism. But institutional demand in these auctions is very elastic, suggesting that institutional investors reveal information in the bidding process. Investor participation is largely predictable based on deal size, and demand is dominated by institutions. Flipping is equally prevalent in auctions as in bookbuilt deals – but unlike in bookbuilding, investors in auctions tend to flip their shares more in cold deals. Finally, we find that institutional investors, who provide more information, are rewarded by obtaining a larger share of the deals that have higher initial returns. Our results therefore suggest that auctioned IPOs could be an effective alternative to traditional bookbuilding.

Corporate Finance in Europe: A Survey

We survey research on corporate finance in Europe. The ambition is to provide the reader with an overview of what we learned, particularly since the beginning of the 1990s. We focus on two themes: (1) the practice and institutions in Europe are heterogeneous and different from those in the United States, and we identify areas where the gap seems to be narrowing; (2) we wish to draw some more general conclusions with respect to the law and finance paradigm that has dominated recent research on comparative institutional analysis, and the diversity of European institutions seems to present an ideal testing ground for this approach. We find that the ability of the law and finance approach to capture the relevant differences within Europe is often limited. We focus in particular on equity primary markets;privatizations; cross-listings; capital structure and payout policy; mergers and acquisitions; business groups, pyramids and dual class shares; and valuation and the cost of capital.