Purpose -This paper aims to explore the issue of corporate governance mechanisms by including the importance of stakeholders, primary objectives of the firm and the ownership of top financial managers of listed firms in Kuwait in the survey tool. It attempts to investigate whether theory aligns with the behaviour of financial managers in practice in an emerging market case.Design/methodology/approach -A survey was developed to focus primarily on the current corporate finance practices implemented by CFOs in listed companies in Kuwait. The target respondents are listed firms in the Kuwaiti Stock Exchange (KSE). The survey includes questions on topics that are closely related to capital budgeting, capital structure, cost of capital and dividend policy. For example, the survey asks the managers how they estimate their cost of equity (CAPM or other methods) and whether the impact of the weighted average cost of equity is taken into consideration in their capital structure choices.Findings -A surprising number of firms are now widely using IRR for decision making. CAPM is also in use, whereas WACC remains the most popular method used. There is some support for the ''bird-in-hand'' dividend theory in the tax-free environment. Firms in Kuwait do not have any particular source of capital structure choices when it comes to how best to finance their projects as is the case in the US market. Firms in Kuwait are consciously striving for maximizing profits and those managers are regarded as their most important stakeholders. This may indicate the existence of agency problems.Research limitations/implications -The limitation of this study lies in the absence of empirical investigation on how corporate finance decisions may affect firms' performance in Kuwait. Hence, empirical validation will be performed by the authors in the next stage of this research, which will form the basis for further research. Empirical validation for the impact of corporate governance on performance is needed.Practical implications -This research may benefit managers and decision makers in many aspects, including having an understanding of applying popular and the most suitable corporate finance and corporate governance techniques in the management of their companies. In this research, the authors have identified the gap between practice and academia.Originality/value -To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to examine comprehensively major areas of financial policies and practices and corporate governance in an emerging market case, especially in the Middle East. Kuwait provides a unique institutional setting in its taxation system. Therefore, this study will make a contribution to the general literature in this field.

This study reports the results of a survey among 80 CFOs in Kuwaitilisted firms on current corporate finance practices namely, capitalbudgeting, costs of capital, capital structure, and dividend policy.This paper analyses specifically the survey responses according tothe firm s attributes and CFO s characteristics such as firm size,sector, equity, CFO s education, ownership, tenure, age, and targetdebt ratio. The results of this survey-based analysis indicate thatthere is some evidence of the application of basic corporate financetools that are inline with what is taught in classrooms. For example,we find that a surprising number of firms are widely using IRR nowas a capital budgeting techniques for decisions making todaydespite its limitation. The CAPM is also in use now to estimate thecost of equity capital whereas WACC remains the most popular usedmethod due the simplicity of the tax system in Kuwait. We findsome support for the Bird-In-Hand dividend theory. We also findthat firms do not have any particular source of capital structurechoices when it comes to how best finance their projects as is thecase in the US market. This finding reveals that finance theory is notyet fully implemented. The results also indicate that corporatefinance practices vary depending on firm and managementcharacteristics.

Australia's ratification of the Kyoto Protocol and the recent release of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Green Paper affirm the Government's commitment toward carbon emissions reduction and the advancement of the environmental cause. Using a naïve model which maximises the environmental cause at the expense of financial impact on the economy, this paper highlights how the failure of the first phase of the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme can be attributed to the over-relaxation of parameters crucial to the success of the scheme as measured by verified reduction in emissions. The Government's preferred position as elucidated in the Green Paper is then contrasted in this context to illustrate the possible sources of failure that are currently engendered in the Scheme. The implementation of the Scheme will impose great compliance costs on the economy-we argue that the Government's over zealous protection of business interests may ultimately lead to failure of the Scheme, in which case the businesses and community would have incurred the financial burden over nothing.

This paper explores the impact of China's two recent stock market reforms, i.e.non-tradable share reform and QFII procedures, on the price linkages of A-and H-sharesby using the technique of cointegration. We found that although A-share index andH-share index is still segmented, the price linkages between individual A-shares and theircross-listed H-shares have been straightened since the two policies implemented. Weargued that ownership restrictions contributed to the market segmentation of Chinese andHong Kong's stock markets and the integration process of China and Hong Kong seemsto be a gradual progress.

This paper investigates the relationship between the minimum price variation and market quality variables for 3 interest rate futures contracts on the Sydney Futures Exchange. Intraday trade and quote data are obtained for the period 4 January 2000 and 1 February 2002, which includes the change in transparency on 19 January 2001. Analysis of the frequency distributions of bid and ask quote variations show a high frequency of these variations posted at 1 tick in the sample periods. Analysis of the quoted bid-ask spreads also show a high frequency of spreads posted at 1 tick. These evidence suggest that the tick sizes for these futures contracts are too large. Examination of the relationships between dollar spreads and dollar ticks provide further evidence that dollar spreads are constrained by the tick size. Dollar spreads are found to be positively related to dollar ticks, average quoted depth and trade price volatility, and negatively related to traded volume.