Pramuan Bunkanwanicha

Big Business Owners in Politics

This paper investigates a little studied but common mechanism that firms use to obtain state favors: business owners themselves seeking election to top office. Using Thailand as a research setting, we find that the more business owners rely on government concessions or the wealthier they are, the more likely they are to run for top office. Once in power, the market valuation of their firms increases dramatically. Surprisingly, the political power does not influence the financing strategies of their firms. Instead, business owners in top offices use their policy-decision powers to implement regulations and public policies favorable to their firms. Such policies hinder not only domestic competitors but also foreign investors. As a result, these politically connected firms are able to capture more market share. The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org., Oxford University Press.

The Value of Marriage to Family Firms

This paper presents the first empirical evidence showing that the marriage of a member of the controlling family adds value to public corporations. The results, based on a uniquely comprehensive data set from Thailand, show that the family firm’s stock price increases when the partner is from either a prominent business or a political family. Abnormal returns tend to be higher for firms whose operation depends on extensive networks. In contrast, marriages to ordinary citizens are not associated with any abnormal returns. These findings are generally supportive of the value of networks in general and marriage in particular.

Debt and Entrenchment: Evidence from Thailand and Indonesia

This paper examines the relation between debt and corporate governance in emerging market economies. We use firm-level panel data of listed companies from Thailand and Indonesia to analyze the firms corporate financing behaviors in connection with its corporate governance arrangements. Our results show that the debt structure is linked to the corporate governance. We find that weaker corporate governance firms, in particular measured by the entrenchment effects, tend to have a higher debt level. The evidence is relatively stronger during the crisis period. Our results also shed light on the importance of the country-specific institutional settings that would affect the empirical results.

Why do Shareholders Value Marriage

This paper shows that marriage can function in a similar way as mergers and acquisitions. To set up alliances that would benefit the firms, a controlling family would encourage their children to marry a person from a politically or economically powerful family. To test this hypothesis, we collect wedding announcements for the offspring of big-business owners in Thailand. The results from the event study show positive abnormal returns when the partner is from a well-connected family. The probit analysis shows that offspring are more likely to choose their partner from a well-connected family when the familys businesses are in the property and construction industries, based on state contracts, more diversified and heavily in debt. Overall, the results suggest that family networks might provide reputation capital, reliable information, and enforce contracts, thus reducing market frictions faced by entrepreneurs in weak institutional environments.

The Deterrent Effect of Anti-Bribery Law Enforcement on the Quality of Earnings

This paper studies the effect of anti-bribery enforcement on the accrual quality of investigated firms and their peers. We analyze a hand-collected sample of 241 bribery cases investigated under the US Foreign Corruption Practices Act (FCPA) over the period 1978-2015. Exploiting the disclosure of anti-bribery law enforcement actions, we document a positive effect on the accrual quality of investigated firms’ peers, but not the investigated firms themselves. Additional tests document that this positive effect is significant only for cases revealed before 2005, when the prosecutors developed their enforcement activity and the use of alternative resolution vehicles. Our results show a positive impact of anti-bribery law enforcement that incentivizes peer firms to enhance their accrual quality once they acknowledge bribing behavior in their industry.

Do Financial Indicators Drive Market Value of Firms in the Transition Economies? The Russian Case

This article studies the factors which influence market valuation of Russian listed firms. Several financial metrics and corporate governance indicators are analysed. Emphasis is given to multicollinearity and cause-and-effect relationships between independent variables. Main results show that there is no significant correlation between the fundamental financial indicators and the Tobin’s Q. However, state ownership, concentration of capital and size are negatively associated with the firm valuation. The evidence suggests that the costs of government ownership outweigh its benefits. JEL classification: G15, G14, C22, F23

Family Business Groups and Organizational Structure: A Study of Bank Pyramidal Ownership in Thailand

This paper investigates how banks and finance companies operate in a family business group. Using uniquely detailed ownership data from Thailand, we find that the controlling families extensively use pyramids to control banks and finance companies and assign different lending strategies across pyramidal tiers. Lower-tier banks tend to extend loans more aggressively and perform more poorly, while upper tier banks carry out more profitable investments. After the crisis hit, upper-tier banks survived and almost all lower-tier banks went bankrupt. Our results suggest that the multilayer organizational structure of bank ownership can affect a bank´s lending behavior and its resistance to economic shocks.