The COVID‐19 outbreak and the subsequent lockdown were an unanticipated shock to the global stock market. Managers also had minimal time to counterbalance its effect through corporate policies. Therefore, this health crisis offers a unique opportunity to examine the effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on shareholder value. We observe that firms engaged in more CSR activities outperform other firms. This suggests that CSR plays a positive role in determining shareholder value, particularly for an emerging market where minority shareholder rights are weak. Collaborating with our main finding, we further find that governance metrics play a significant role.

PurposeWe examine how business group affiliation affects corporate debt maturity.Design/methodology/approachThis study employs the financial data of all listed Indian companies obtained from the CMIE database for 2011–2018. The ordinary least square, firm-fixed effect and Fama–Macbeth regression methods are used for empirical analysis. We use propensity score matching and difference-in-difference method to address endogeneity issues. Further, two-stage least square (2SLS) regression is performed to mitigate the endogeneity that stems from simultaneity between debt maturity and leverage.FindingsUsing Indian firms, we report that group affiliation is positively associated with corporate debt maturity; group firms use more long-term debt compared to similar standalone firms. We also observe that the positive effect of group affiliation on debt maturity is more pronounced in business group firms associated with a group having more resources and having unrelated diversification. However, information asymmetry and moral hazard problems weaken the impact of group affiliation on debt maturity structure of a firm. Overall, our results are consistent with co-insurance benefits that are an argument for the presence of business groups in emerging markets.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the existing literature by testing the role of group affiliation on corporate debt maturity decisions in the Indian market context where market imperfections persuade firms to borrow from banks. This is also the first study on determinants of corporate debt maturity that distinguishes between public and private debt.