Isaac K. Otchere

Can Commercialization Improve the Performance of Stock Exchanges Even Without Corporatization

We examine the performance of mutual, demutualized, and publicly listed exchanges and find evidence of improved performance along the exchange governance continuum, with publicly traded exchanges exhibiting better operating performance than demutualized exchanges. However, our robustness test, focusing on the corporatized exchanges that have gone through the three phases of the governance structure, shows that the listed exchanges do not exhibit evidence of incremental gains in efficiency and profitability beyond what they achieved at the demutualization phase. We conclude that commercialization provides sufficient freedom for exchanges to exploit monopoly rents before going public, while corporatization brings about proper valuation of the exchanges franchise.

Privatization, Efficiency and Intra-industry Effects: Analysis of China's Privatization

In this study, we use both accounting and stock market data to examine the performance of privatized firms in China and that of their rivals. Consistent with our conjecture, we find that competitors reacted negatively to the privatization announcements. However, the magnitude of the abnormal returns, together with the significance level, increases as the event window widens. For example, while the rivals marginally lost 0.5% of their value on the announcement date, they lost 1.3% (3.3%) of their value during the five-day (21-day) period surrounding the privatization announcement date. The results suggest that privatization of state owned enterprises in China signalled a change in the competitive balance in the industries, since most of the rivals reacted negatively to the announcements. Analysis of the operating performance measures also shows that the privatized firms outperformed their industry counterparts in the post-privatization period. Furthermore, we examine the long-term stock market performance of the privatized firms relative to that of the industry rivals and find that the privatized firms outperformed their industry rivals only by the end of the third year after privatization. Although most of the sample firms are partially privatized, and may probably be required to meet some social objectives during the post partial privatization period, we did not find any evidence that the proportion of government ownership explains the returns of the privatized firms.

FDI and Financial Market Development in Africa

The literature on the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI), financial market development (FMD) and economic growth focuses mainly on two aspects: the relationship between FDI and economic growth, and the role played by FMD in that linkage. The literature is almost silent on the relationship and the direction of causality between FDI and FMD. Although it has been established that FDI contributes more to growth in countries with a more developed financial market, it is not clear how FDI and FMD interact with each other. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap in the African context. Particularly, in Africa, where stock markets experience low liquidity and less transparency, FDI can be an impetus for financial market reforms and serve as a mechanism to improve the transparency and the depth of the financial markets. Also, well‐functioning financial markets can help channel foreign investments more efficiently into productive sectors, and therefore create more value for investors, hence making the countries more attractive to FDI. In short, both FDI and FMD will impact each other simultaneously, which is confirmed by our findings. We document a bidirectional causality between FDI and FMD. Furthermore, the multivariate regression results of the system of simultaneous equations also confirm the positive relationship between FDI and FMD in Africa. We also find that FDI contributes to economic growth in Africa after controlling for endogeneity between FDI, FMD and economic growth.

Do Index Effects Reflect Idiosyncratic or Industry Effects? A Re-Examination of the Winners and Losers of S&P 500 Index Addition

This paper provides new findings concerning additions to the S&P 500 Index. We present the first evidence of industry effects that occur when stocks are added to the S&P 500 Index. With over a trillion dollars in index funds wealth tied to the S&P 500 Index, index additions exert price pressures on not only the firms that are added to the index and but the incumbent industry counterparts as well. We find that the share price of an added firms industry counterparts increase in the announcement date and decrease on the effective date. We provide evidence that portfolio rebalancing helps explain the effective date abnormal returns documented for the incumbent industry counterparts. In addition, we show that the likelihood of a company being added to the S&P 500 Index is higher in industries with strong innovative activity, making revisions to the Index a vehicle for incorporating the value of such activity. Overall, our results suggest that S&P 500 Index composition changes are not information-free events.

Cross-border acquisitions and host country competitiveness

We investigate the competitive effects of cross‐border takeovers and find that following the acquisitions, the competitiveness of cross‐border targets improves. The results for industry rivals, however, are mixed. Rivals of targets of cross‐border acquisitions experience improvements in their competitive position in the long term, while at the same time, their growth and market share suffer. These acquisitions lead to a shifting of market share from rivals to cross‐border targets, which is suggestive of increased industry concentration. Cross‐border acquisitions also enhance the host countrys financial market development, and lead to increases in innovation in the host country. Overall, our results cast some doubts on the often pessimistic view of foreign takeovers held by some politicians that these deals are bad for the host country.

Merging Corporatized Financial Markets

Increased competition in the stock exchange industry, exacerbated by technological advancements, has motivated many exchanges to engage in mergers and acquisitions as a strategic choice for stemming the competition tide. We examine the stock and product markets effects of financial exchange mergers and find among others that shareholders of competing exchanges from the same geographical region and competitors at the same stage of development realize significantly positive abnormal returns as those involved in the merger. We also find that the merging exchanges increase their market share and experience significant reductions in bid-ask spreads at the expense of rival exchanges.