Board Characteristics, Layoffs, and Shareholder’s Wealth

• Main Authors: Shce-wei Hu, 胡書瑋
• Other Authors: I-Ju Chen
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/88096828917812530672

碩士 === 元智大學 === 財務金融學系 === 98 === Financial theory advocates that the purpose of management group is to maximize shareholder value. Thus, management groups often pursue their purpose at the cost of the interests of employees. The board is the supreme power of supervision to direct or oversee the performance and operation of management groups, but the board having different structure may have different viewpoints on the layoff decision and it may result in different market reactions for layoff announcement. This study adopts event study method to investigate layoff announcement samples from 1995 to 2007, and try to observe the effect of different board structures’ layoff decision announcements on their layoff strategies and different stock reactions that may result. This paper use univariate and multiple regression analysis separately. The result finds that the effects of layoff events on stock market appear to be negative. We further consider the board structure including board tenure, proportion of outsider director, board compensation, and whether the CEO and chairperson positions are the same person. The results also show that the firms separating the CEO and chairman of the board or the firms with small board size will bring about larger negative reaction of stock price in the announcement period.