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| Internal Governance and Capital Structure Adjustment: Evidence from the Perspective of Non-CEO Executives' Independence |
| ZHANG Bo, HAN Yadong, LI Guangzhong
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School of Business, Renmin University of China;
School of Business/Advanced Institute of Finance, Sun Yat-sen University |
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Abstract Decisions regarding capital structure directly affect long-term corporate performance and value. Morellec, Nikolov, and Schurhoff (2012) emphasize the role of agency conflicts in corporate financing decisions and develop a tradeoff model to investigate the importance of manager-shareholder conflicts in capital structure choice. Following Morellec et al. (2012), other studies investigate the roles of various corporate governance mechanisms, such as external governance mechanisms, board oversight, and executive compensation contracts, in alleviating the problem of sub-optimal capital structures caused by the conflicts between shareholders and managers.
However, most studies focus on individual CEOs as the representatives of the top management team, the roles of non-CEO executives in corporate decision-making have not been fully examined. Non-CEO executives have a significant influence on corporate decision-making as they are the implementers of business decisions, and thus monitor and constrain the self-interested behavior of CEOs. The internal monitoring that takes place from the bottom up within a top management team (TMT) is known as TMT internal governance.
The effectiveness of internal governance within a TMT requires non-CEO executives to be independent from the CEO. In China, a CEO has the right to propose the appointment or dismissal of non-CEO executives. The CEO may prefer to select non-CEO executives who share similar values, and these executives may also be grateful to the CEO who hired them, thus diminishing their monitoring role. In this study, we use the proportion of the top four highest-paid non-CEO executives appointed before a current CEO’s arrival to measure TMT internal governance. The larger this proportion, the greater the independence of non-CEO executives and the stronger the TMT internal governance.
Using a sample of Chinese listed companies from 2001 to 2017, we investigate the effect of TMT internal governance on capital structure decisions. We find that TMT internal governance significantly increases a firm's leverage when its actual leverage is lower than the target leverage ratio, particularly for non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs). In addition, the effect of TMT internal governance is greater for firms with more severe agency problems and those with non-CEO executives who have stronger incentives to monitor the CEO. Our analysis of the mechanism reveals that TMT internal governance reduces the degree of deviation from the target leverage ratio by reducing the agency costs.
Our study contributes to the literature on corporate governance and capital structure and has important policy implications for the further development of the corporate governance of Chinese listed companies. Our study contributes to the literature focusing on the impact of corporate governance on capital structure decisions by taking the perspective of TMT internal governance, which has previously been neglected. Our study also provides policy implications for improving corporate governance and optimizing capital structures.
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Received: 29 December 2019
Published: 04 March 2021
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