Léopold Djoutsa Wamba

Does shareholder-oriented corporate governance reduce firm risk? Evidence from listed European companies

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of the mechanisms of corporate governance on the volatility of companies’ financial profitability.,For the period 2002-2014, the authors evaluate the relations linking various indices involved in corporate governance with the systematic risk supported by these companies for a sample of 355 firms domiciled in Europe. To empirically test these relationships, the authors calculated a synthetic index of corporate governance quality (QGI) based on the 53 items of assessment of the companies’ governance proposed by the database ASSET4. Following the method used by Boncori et al. (2016), the authors first reduced the number of dimensions of corporate governance by performing a principal component analysis of the sample, which resulted in the following five components: management’s shareholder commitment, shareholder rights, characteristics of the board of directors, transparency of the financial information and independence of the audit.,The results of the tests indicate that the synthetic index of governance that the authors have built is only significant at the 10 percent threshold. The impact of this variable on the systematic risk of the company is of the order of one-tenth of a point. The decomposition of this index into five variables shows that management’s commitment to shareholders and the effectiveness of the board of directors in carrying out its supervisory tasks are likely to reduce, but again to a limited extent, the risk borne by the company.,This observation guides the future work in introducing variables that reflect the social responsibilities of the companies in the sample in order to distinguish the effects of social responsibility from those of purely shareholder-oriented governance on systematic risk.,This paper demonstrates the interest of good governance on the risk of firms and identifies certain characteristics upon which to act.,Although the relations between corporate governance mechanisms and profitability expectations have been the subject of numerous studies, few authors have examined the influence of governorship on the volatility of this profitability, particularly in Europe. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the rare work on this topic relates to only a limited number of countries.

Indebtedness for young companies: effects on survival

Abstract Based on data from 7,350 Cameroonian companies created between 1990 and 2008, we study the link between the characteristics of indebtedness for young companies during their creation and survival period of up to three years, from three to five years, and beyond five years. We complement our quantitative analysis with semi-directive interviews of Cameroonian entrepreneurs to deepen our study. Our results are manifold. We show that access to bank loans during the creation phase, as well as the volume of loans or, to some extent, the debt ratio improve the probability of survival during the early years, but this effect fades away rapidly. The interviews shed light on the motivations of entrepreneurs, particularly of those with very small businesses. Finally, our work reveals the antecedent role of their social capital that facilitates their access to bank loans, and, therefore, the probability of company survival.

The determinants of loan delinquency in urban microfinance institutions in Cameroon

The Financial Cooperative of African Women, founded to promote female entrepreneurship quickly showed its limitations in terms of loan repayment performance. This study aims at identifying the determinants of loan delinquency rates in this institution. We carry out a logistic regression analysis on the data collected from a sample of 603 cases of loans to members in March 2013. Factors related to the borrower (age and availability of complementary income) and to the institution (amount of loan, duration and loan officer visit during the repayment period) affect the default rate in this institution.