The study reveals the extent of changes in selective financial numbers caused by fixed asset revaluation (FAR) and explores whether there was a management motive for playing the financial numbers game through using the FAR model. The data set consists of a sample of 142 listed companies purposively selected from 13 industries. The study found a significant impact of FAR on the net asset value (NAV), fixed asset intensity (FAI), and debt-to-equity ratio (DER). These findings are supported by the political cost and the debt covenant hypotheses. The study also observed a high growth of fixed assets by 9.5% to 14,603.8% resulting from FAR. More revealing is that FAR increased NAV in revaluer companies by an average of 427.20% as compared to 6.86% in non-revaluer companies. Even some companies with negative NAV took resort on FAR to show positive NAV. Besides, revaluer companies managed to reduce their DER by 70.45% as opposed to an increase of 8.45% in non-revaluer companies. Hence, the study concludes that most of the publicly-listed companies are involved in financial numbers game by the use of the FAR model. To build confidence among investors, companies should practice FAR rightly and disclose related information to help reduce information asymmetry.
Abstract:After the cruel crash in 1996 Bangladesh stock market had started growing from 2006 due to listing of a few profitable government entities and Multinational Companies (MNCs). Together with individual investors nearly all commercial banks involved themselves intensely in stock market.Step by step, the bullish market transformed into a bubble and on December 05, 2010, the Dhaka Stock Exchange General Index (DGEN) reached at the record high of 8918.5, almost 5.6 times higher than December 2006. Concurrently, market capitalization and turnover increased by 11.1 times and 61.7 times respectively. However, when the bubble burst on December 19, 2010 the DGEN witnessed its biggest one day fall of 6.7 percent and since then the market has become bearish with almost no positive movement of stock prices. Against this backdrop, this study identified four moneymaking psychologies of domestic investors specifically greed, envy, speculation, and overconfidence that contributed to the formation of bubble, while four loss-minimizing and capital-protecting psychologies such as panic, frustration, lack of self-confidence, and distrust caused the bubble to burst. The bankers, brokers and manipulators were the biggest gainers, whereas the most unaware and greedy small investors encountered heavy loss. The market will be less volatile, more mature, and sustainable when most of the investors will be conscious about the potential risks and returns and the regulators will play their part sincerely and efficiently.
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