Share Pledges, Risk Management, and Stake Raising by Large Shareholders
HU Conghui, ZHU Feifei, QIU Huimin
Business School, Beijing Normal University; School of Finance, Central University of Finance and Economics; Business School, University of International Business and Economics
Summary:
Share pledges are pervasive in China's A-share market. By the end of 2019, the market value of major shareholders' pledges had reached 5482 billion RMB, which accounted for 9.25% of the total market value of the A-share market. As a typical method of collateralized financing,the value of share pledges changes with the stock price. When the company's stock price goes down, the major shareholders are more likely to face margin call or fire-sale pressures, which can endanger the control rights of major shareholders. Even worse, in the case of a systemic market downturn, a large number of pledging risk events may lead to a systemic crisis in the financial market. Stake raising (i.e., a practice whereby major shareholders use their own money to buy stocks and increase their holdings of listed firms through the secondary market) is often interpreted as a positive signal by the stock market. Thanks to the effectiveness of stake raising in stabilizing and improving stock prices, its flexibility in terms of implementation and its controllability in terms of costs, stake raising can be used as an alternative way in managing share pledging risk. However, is this the case in China's A share market? If so, what is the underlying channel and what is the market performance of stake raising? Based on a sample of A-share listed companies from 2004 to 2016 , we find that share pledges tend to affect the stake-raising behavior of large shareholders, and the underlying channel is through risk management. Compared with large shareholders who are not facing margin call pressure, shareholders who are facing such pressure are more likely to increase their personal holdings of shares. Compared with shareholders in state-owned enterprises, those who owned private companies' shares show a more significant relation between share pledges and stake raising. In addition, we extend above results by further analyzing the aspects of market performance, media reports, and investor attention to shareholders' stake-raising behavior. We find that for shareholders who have faced margin call pressure, the market performance of listed firms for which major shareholders have conducted stake raising is significantly better than the performance of firms whose shareholders have not done so. In analyzing media reports and investor attention, we find that after completion of an actual stake-raising, the relevant media coverage and investor attention improve significantly. All of the above results show that in situations that involve share pledges, the majority shareholders are more likely to increase their shareholding in order to improve the risk management of share pledge. In addition, stake-raising behavior can indeed stabilize stock prices and mitigate the risk of share pledges for major shareholders. Our paper makes two contributions. First, we show that beyond the traditional financial and political motivations for stake raising, shareholders can also be motivated by the need for managing the risk of share pledges. Second, we show that apart from the ex-ante methods of risk prevention, such as earnings management, tax avoidance, or dividend policies, stake raising can serve as another effective means for alleviating the risks of share pledges for large shareholders,and this is due to its effectiveness, flexibility, and the controllability of costs. Our findings have two main policy implications. For large shareholders themselves, the findings suggest that stake raising can be an effective means for managing the risk of share pledges, apart from the methods of earnings management, tax evasion, dividend policies, and other ex-ante risk-management measures. For the authorities, our findings imply that regulating stake raising and share pledges are of great importance for improving the corporate governance of listed companies, especially in terms of regulating the behavior of large shareholders. Such methods are critical in preventing risks and promoting the healthy development of China's financial markets.
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