No abstract

This study analyzes the leverage policies of the family and non-family firms of eight East Asian Economies (Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Taiwan) by using combined data of 690 family and non-family firms with 3,224 firm–years over the period 2006–2010. This study has used an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression for analyzing the data for the first question, while for the second question, logit regression has been used as the dependent variable (a binary variable). Prior research on family and non-family firms has revealed that family firms issue less (high) debt than non-family firms. Our analysis on a sample of East Asian Economies discloses that family firms have significantly different leverage levels than non-family firms, but their signs are not consistent. On the contrary, when the owner works as CEO/Chairman or member of the Board of Directors, then the family firms issue less debt than the non-family firms. Besides that, this study adds a new question that has not been addressed in the prior studies. The new question has focused on the speed of leverage adjustment. It is found that family firms and non-family firms regarding their debt maturity structure (short-term debt and long-term debt), the speed of leverage adjustments, and their decision to issue securities (i.e., debt vs. equity) are not significantly different. This study concluded that though family firms have a strong influence on each economy, but in South-East Asian countries, leverage policies of the family firms are not much different than that of non-family firms.

The field of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has developed exponentially in the last decade and is consistently getting to be a worldwide slant. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a worldwide matter around the world that comes about an expanding number of studies on CSR universally as well as in Malaysia. Furthermore, the importance of CSR practices was emphasized by companies in order to ensure its sustainability in corporate world which are focused on (a) environment, (b) social dimension sustainability, (c) economic advancement, (d) stakeholder behaviour and (e) ethical evolution of society. In this manner, this paper gives a concept of CSR writing that has been conducted in Malaysia to assess the execution of CSR among organizations in Malaysia. It is presently anticipated that organizations expressly take into consideration all perspectives of their execution, not as it were their money related comes about, but moreover their social and commerce environment. Subsequently, most of organizations are presently locked in genuine endeavours to characterize and coordinated CSR into all perspectives of their businesses and exhibitions. The point of our think about is to get it this slant in Malaysia and particularly to explore (i) the status of CSR in Malaysia; (ii) different CSR practices in Malaysia; and (iii) future dissemination of CSR in Malaysia. Finally, over the last few decades, Malaysia has been gradually improving its alignment with global management practices such as quality management and ISO 9002.

The use of debt by REITs entity seems to be a puzzle in numerous REITs literature, as REITs are tax-exempted business entities. The trade-off theory implies that the financing strategy of using debt provides no value in a REIT entity with a marginal tax rate of zero. However, high dividend pay-out requirement has limit REITs' ability to retain its internal earnings, thus require REITs to use debt to undertake its growth strategies. This study aims to investigate the great curiosity about the debt financing decision of REITs in Malaysia (MREITs) at all given no tax shield benefit and to examine the moderating effect of financial flexibility in a relationship between debt financing and the financial performance. Using the unbalanced panel data from all MREITs for the time period between 2005 and 2014, the results of this study are consistent with the pecking order theory in explaining the MREITs debt financing decision but are less supportive of the trade-off theory on tax benefits and agency theory of free cash flow on disciplinary tools. This suggests that MREITs use debt to support the growth needs than tax motives and the high dividend pay-out requirement behaves as a "disciplinary tool," not through the use of debt. The findings also reveal that financial flexibility plays an important role to alter the negative relationship between debt financing and financial performance to positive relationship. This study serves as a useful guide for MREITs' managers in managing financial flexibility as it has important moderating effects on the relationship between debt financing and financial performance.

The main purpose of this study is to investigate an important issue in behavioural finance area that is the role of investor sentiment in determining firm performance, alongside with market timing and other fundamental firm factors in the context of Malaysian market. The impact of pre and post financial crisis during study period of 2004 to 2015 is incorporated in the analysis. The study uses a balanced panel data of 143 IPO firms in Malaysia during the study period. The sentiment index is developed using panel data cross section based on three IPOs proxies, which are IPO volume, market turnover and dividend premium. The findings indicate that market timing is found to have a strong influence towards firm performance with a positive and high level of significance relationship during pre and post financial crisis. Whereas investor sentiment does influence firm performance, particularly when timing is proxied by initial return before the financial crisis period. Other firm specific factors, growth show very strong positive relationship with firm performance. The remaining factors, namely tangibility of asset, profitability, size and industry show mix results either consistent or inconsistent with past literature irrespective of pre or post financial crisis. The finding offers a useful reference for firm managers’ to consistently time the market for the new and subsequent issue. While the investors have to pay attention on important information available in the market than become overly optimistic about future prospect of any investment as firm will continue to exploit timing strategy in their financing decision.