• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• 제7권4호
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• pp.97-105
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• 2020

This paper explores the impact of capital structure on firm performance in the context of Vietnam. The paper investigates the different effect of capital structure on firm performance in state-owned and non-state enterprises listed on the Vietnam stock market. The panel data of research sample includes 488 non-financial listed companies on the Vietnam stock market for a period of six years, from 2013 to 2018. The Generalized Least Square (GLS) is employed to address econometric issues and to improve the accuracy of the regression coefficients. In this research, firm performance is measured by return on equity (ROE), return on assets (ROA), and earnings per share (EPS). The ratios of short-term liabilities, long-term liabilities, and total liabilities to total assets are proxy for capital structure. Firm sizes, growth rate, liquidity, and ratio of fixed assets to total assets are control variables in the study. The empirical results show that capital structure has a statistically significant negative effect on the firm performance. The result also shows this effect is stronger in state-owned enterprises than non-state enterprises in Vietnam. These evidences provide a new insight to managers of both state-owned and non-state enterprises on how to improve the firm's performance with capital structure.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• 제7권5호
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• pp.51-60
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• 2020

The paper examines the characteristics and causes of the expectation gap of audit and assurance services. The paper has conducted three surveys with three target groups. In the first survey, participants are auditors, users of audit reports are subject in the second survey and in the third survey, and students major in auditing are selected. The content of the survey aims to find out the differences in perception of the survey participants on two issues: (i) responsibilities of auditors for detection frauds, errors, protection of the enterprise's assets and financial scandals, and (ii) the role of audit and auditors in making investment decisions and investor's belief. The research carried out survey from March to September 2019 with 165 responds. The collected data was processed by statistical software SPSS, version 23, and Mann-Whitney U test was used to analyze the results of the audit expectation gap between the auditor group and the users of audit report group and between the student group and users of audit report group. The results showed that there exists an expectation gap in the responsibility of auditors for detection of all frauds, errors and protection enterprise's assets. Recommendations include strengthening audit standards, penalizing bad practices and ensuring auditor's independence.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• 제7권2호
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• pp.43-52
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• 2020

The paper investigates the mechanism through which corporate credit ratings affect dividend payments by decomposing the mean difference of dividends into a part that is explained by the determinants of dividends and a residual part that is contributed by the pure credit group effect, in the framework of the traditional dividend model of Fama and French (2001). Historically, better credit rated firms have shown consistently higher propensity to pay dividends especially during the economic crisis period. According to the counter-factual decomposition technique of Jann (2008), better rated firms are more responsive to the firm characteristics that have positive impact on dividends and poor rated firms are more responsive to the negative dividend predictors. As a result, good (bad) credit ratings make corporate managers become more bold (timid) in their dividend payments and they tend to pay more (less) dividends than what their firm characteristics prescribe. The degree of information asymmetry increases for the poor group firms during crisis periods and they attempt to reserve more cash in preparation for future investments. The decomposition results suggest that the credit group effect can potentially exceed the effect of firm characteristics because firms of different credit ratings can respond to the very same firm characteristics in a different manner.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• 제7권8호
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• pp.233-246
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• 2020

This paper investigates the effect of the involvement of the board chairman in the audit committee (AC) on earnings management (EM). It examines Bursa Malaysia-listed companies with the lowest positive earnings for the years 2013 to 2015. The Modified Jones Model by Kasznik (1999) was used to determine discretionary accruals. An AC that includes its board chairman as an ordinary member is associated with greater discretionary accruals. However, a board chairman who is also the chairman of the AC does not seem to influence discretionary accruals. This paper supports the agency theory and policy-makers' efforts to prevent board chairmen from sitting on ACs. It is the first study that uses the agency theory to describe the association between the board chairman's involvement in the both AC and EM. This study alerts policy-makers, stakeholders and researchers to the influence of a board chairman serving on the AC in curbing EM. Furthermore, it provides empirical evidence that the majority of Malaysian companies whose board chairmen are involved in the AC appoint the chairman as an ordinary member of the AC. This indicates that executive directors may affect such actions. Hence, more policies are needed to improve AC independence.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• 제7권11호
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• pp.327-333
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• 2020

Corporate social responsibility is an inevitable trend in the global context. It is the responsibility of the organizations to the community and society to ensure the fairness of the interests of stakeholders. This is an issue that deserves attention, not in the national or regional level, but as a global issue. The purpose of article is to examine the effect of corporate governance on corporate social responsibility disclosure of 155 samples of 31 Vietnamese commercial banks from 2015 to 2019. The data of this study is employing time-series data and used the ordinary least squares to test the model. The results show that there are three factors that positively affect corporate social responsibility disclosure, namely, board size, foreign members of board, and audit committee. Thereby, the article proposes that board of director in Vietnamese commercial banks needs to raise awareness about corporate social responsibility, and the Central bank of Vietnam should monitor the disclosure of information regularly with severe sanctions on commercial banks that do not comply with the regulations of corporate social responsibility disclosure. This contributes to improving the information quality of the banking sector to meet the trend of international economic integration.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• 제7권10호
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• pp.741-750
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• 2020

This study examines the influence of working capital management (WCM) factors on the profitability of steel companies listed on the Stock Exchange of Vietnam. Data was collected from audited financial statements of companies for a period of 10 years, from 2010 to 2019. The number of samples eligible for research is 20 out of 26 companies, which is equivalent to 76.9%. With the help of dedicated software Stata version 14, the impact determination of WCM (through 8 independent variables: DIO, DPO, DSO, CCC, SIZ, CR, LEV, GRO) to the firm's profitability (through the dependent variable) is performed through multivariate regression models. Research results from companies in the steel industry in Vietnam during this period indicate that WCM has a strong impact on the profitability of businesses. Among 8 factors affecting the profitability of steel enterprises, factors DPO, DIO, DSO, CR, SIZ, GRO have a positive impact, boosting profitability; 2 factors CCC and LEV have a negative impact on profitability; in which, the effect of CCC is negligible. This conclusion is almost in contrast to many previously published studies due to the specifics of the industry as well as the different stages of economic development associated with the economic management policies of the State.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• 제6권2호
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• pp.247-255
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• 2019

This study examines the different roles of cash flow in assessing investment returns in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The analysis covers over 900 listed firms across Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand for the period post the Asian financial crisis of 2001-2017. Firm-level panel data analysis shows that cash flow factors are important in all contexts of cash return on assets, earnings quality and market value multiple across the region even after controlling for typical measures of profitability. The results suggest that firms should manage cash flow prudently in considerations of firm value from the shareholder's perspective, measured directly using stock return. Cash profitability on assets should become an important firm performance indicator, whilst higher cash component over reported earnings is preferred. The market also tends to respond favourably to cash flow yield as a price multiple in valuation, outpacing the role of earnings yield. Such findings are robust across the pre and post subprime crisis periods, across estimation methods pertaining to finance panel standard errors, as well as across static and dynamic considerations of returns. It is hence sensible to consider cash flow factors in the research pertaining to asset pricing and factor investing in the ASEAN region.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• 제6권1호
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• pp.33-45
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• 2019

This study analyzed the association between IFRS adjustments, measured with the IFRS reconciliations, and the subsequent meeting of target earnings. IFRS adjustments include the amounts to be adjusted intentionally, as well as the differences in accounting standards. This study estimated intentional IFRS adjustments and analyzed their association with meeting target earnings. As the results of our analysis, meeting target earnings was associated positively with intentional IFRS adjustments for the total assets, was negatively associated with them for current assets, and was positively associated with them for non-current assets. Since understatement of current assets can be realized into earnings in a short period of time, it seems that current assets were underestimated intentionally in order to meet target earnings subsequently. In contrast, it is considered that non-current assets were overestimated to make them more likely to meet target earnings either by increasing the firm size or by improving financial solvency. The results of this study imply that IFRS adjustments are useful to manage earnings for meeting target earnings. Since accounting standards may be established and revised constantly, which adjustments for them may occur, the results on IFRS adjustments are expected to have implications for investors, policy-makers, and standards establishment entities.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• 제8권12호
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• pp.323-336
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• 2021

The present study aims to examine the impact of real earnings management on the future value of the firm and its persistence. The study also tests suspect firm effects on the relationship between real earnings management and the future value of the firm. The sample of the present study consists of all listed non-financial firms from the year 2011 to 2018. Real earnings management has been measured in three alternative ways viz., abnormal operating cash flows, abnormal discretionary spending, and abnormal production cost. Tobin's Q is used as a measure of firm value. The interaction term of real earnings management and Tobin's Q is used to test firm value persistence. The results of the analysis disclose that out of three measures of real earnings management, abnormal reduction in discretionary spending only has a significant negative impact on the persistence of firm value. Moreover, the suspect firm analysis reveals that when the underlying motive of real earnings management is to meet zero earnings, both abnormal increases in operating cash flows and abnormal reduction in discretionary spending have a significant negative impact on firm value persistence.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• 제8권11호
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• pp.79-86
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• 2021

In recent years, firm performance has been a topic that attracts many researchers. It is extremely important to identify the factors that change firm performance. In the current trend of competition and integration, foreign ownership, product market competition is found to reduce agency costs and impact firm performance. The purpose of this research is to investigate the relationship between foreign ownership, product market competition, and firm performance. Our research using a quantile regression model, through panel data of 290 companies listed on the Vietnam stock exchange (include Ho Chi Minh and Hanoi stock exchanges) from 2017 to 2019 that was collected by Thomson - Reuters DataStream has shown that foreign ownership and product market competition have a positive impact on Tobin's Q but are not statistically significant with ROA. Critically, our quantile regression results suppose foreign ownership, product market competition have a significantly larger positive impact in high-performing firms relative to low-performing firms. The results help propose solutions to planners and managers to change foreign ownership and product market competition to increase business performance. Besides, through quantile regression analysis, managers need to pay attention to the impact on foreign ownership, product market competition; there will be a difference between high-performing firms relative to low-performing firms.