This paper discusses options holding concentration, which we define as the proportion of options outstanding under a firm's executive options plan held by a firm's board and the top five non board executives. We examine previous empirical literature on executive options plans and some of the...

The question of corporate governance has rarely if ever enjoyed greater prominence than that accorded to it at present. Significant changes to governance regulations and requirements have transpired within a comparatively brief period of time. In Australia, ongoing reform to corporate law via...

This paper examines the risk/return performance of European bank stocks before and after the implementation of the minimum capital requirements under the Basel Accord of 1988. We compare the performance of banks in Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Scandinavia,...

In this paper we question the relevance, and assess the implications, of the practice in banking to use a uniform hurdle rate based on the cost of equity for the purposes of pricing and performance measurement. We examine three perspectives on this issue. First, we point to the potential...

The issue of hybrid instruments by firms is often justified on the grounds that these instruments allow issuers to achieve a lower cost of capital than would be the case under issues of straight debt and equity. In order to assess the validity of such claims it is necessary to examine the...

The past few years have seen high levels of growth in the use of hybrid financial securities by Australian corporations. The conventional explanation for this phenomenon has been that hybrid securities represent a highly flexible tool capable of deployment towards the end of reducing overall...

This paper examines the important role of the Management Expense Ratio (MER) in fee disclosure, and why it is useful in assisting investors in the selection and retention of investment funds. Reporting on a study of 50 Australian investment funds, this paper identifies 17 different fee types...

By convention, the quality of an audit is understood to relate to the joint probability that its conduct results in the detection and reporting of material financial statement errors. Early research into this phenomenon suggested a positive relationship between audit firm size and audit quality....