Empirical results Proceeding E Book 4A Turky
555
performance tend to change their name. And the leverage ratio of corporate name change firms is higher and the size of corporate name change firms is smaller than
Panel 2, so we find that the smaller firms more change their name.
[Table 4 about here]
The standard deviation of operating income and return on assets is big so that we try to minimize the eliminations of observations to represent the features of corporate
name change firms. Instead we run parrel Mann-Whitney test for non-parametric statistics.
Table 5 shows the correlation coefficients between the pairs of the variables of interest for the sample in Panel 1 corporate name change firms and Panel 2total
firms.
[Table 5 about here]
The result of correlation analysis for both Panel 1 and Panel 2 indicates that corporate name change firm is significantly negatively correlated with discretionary
accruals. It also shows that corporate name change by loss-reporting firms is significantly negatively correlated with discretionary accruals. And corporate name by
largest stockholders change firms is significantly negatively correlated with discretionary accruals in panel 1. We find that cash from operationsCFO and total
accrualsTA have a significant negative relationship and Leverage ratios have a significant negative relationship with both TA and DA.
However, the growth rate of sales and the size of firms do not exhibit significant relationship with accruals.
4. 2 Regression Analysis
The regression results for hypothesis 1 are reported in table 6.
[Table 6 about here]
The results are reported for regression DA1 2, 3 on NC and controlling for CFO, LEV, SIZE, GRW. We do not control CFO in model 2 because we already control it
during drawing model 2. For all model, the coefficients on NC are negative and significant at the .01 level.
We expect that corporate name change firms will lower their earnings because most of them have high debt-ratio or are administrative issues in the KOSDAQ market, so
they cant manage earnings upward. We find that corporate name change firms have
556
negative discretionary accrual and the result is consistent with our expectation. All of the control variables exhibit coefficients consistent with the previous study and all
variables are significant. Firms with higher debt ratio change corporate name more. Next we investigate whether there are differences of discretional accruals depending
on the reason of corporate name change. Table 7 shows the result of regression of DA 12, 3 on LC, IC, OC and controlling for
CFO, LEV, SIZE, GRW. LC is a dummy variable which has a value 1 when a firm reports current loss and IC is a dummy which has a value 1 when a firm change
industry through consolidation or change the primary products. OC is a dummy which has a value 1 when the largest stockholders are changed for corporate name change
firms.
[Table 7 about here]
We expect there is difference among the corporate name changes. Yang et al.2009 report that managers of loss-reporting firms may take actions to accelerate the
collection of receivables, and delay the purchases of inventory and payment of payables. and those actions will result in the decrease of accruals. Our findings are
consistent with the previous study. Corporate name change by loss-reporting firms have significantly negative discretionary accruals in all models, on the contrary the
corporate name change of industry change firms and largest stockholders change firms have no significant relationship with discretionary accruals.
Therefore, the result supports hypothesis 2 that there are statistically significant differences among the reasons for corporate name changes.
Corporate name have changed by the interaction of multiple factors, by not just one factor. For example, corporate name change could be happened that the largest
stockholders have changed by disposition of shares or the management right abundantly due to current bad performance. Largest stockholders could be changed
following the industry consolidation or continued corporate restructuring. So we investigate the effect the interaction of multiple factors on discretionary accruals
when corporate name change reasons are interplayed and table 8 reports that the result of regression.
[Table 8 about here]
We find that corporate name change by loss-reporting firms have significantly negative discretionary accruals in all models and corporate name change of largest
stockholders change firms have significantly positive discretional accruals in model 1
557
and 3. And corporate name change by loss-reporting and largest stockholders
change firms have significantly negative relationship with discretionary accruals. It means the relationship between corporate name change by loss-reporting firms and
discretionary accruals is strongest among other purpose.
Ⅴ. Conclusion
Corporate name is supposed to serve as a signal to convey information about a firm
‘s major business or product lines. Investors will be better served as long as corporate names can be associated with major businesses or product lines.
According to our investigation, there is a big increase in corporate name changes by loss-reporting firms even though it is accompanied by non-trivial costs such as
consulting fees and corporate identity costs. In this paper, we focus the purpose of the management who change their name,
different from the prior study. We investigate the background to corporate name changes of Korean listed companies in the years of 2004 to 2008. We first
descriptively examine the current trend of corporate name change; how many firms change corporate names, how they have changed, why they change and who
change names .
Second we examine empirically whether name change firms are associated with discretional accruals. We further divide the reason of corporate name
change into cosmetic change to hide negative earning, industry change or consolidation and change of the largest stockholders to examine whether there are
differences among the name change reasons. We find that corporate name change firms generally report bad performance
comparing non-changing firms and many corporate name change firms announce the embezzlements or misappropriation of management. Also there are many corporate
name change firms of administration from KOSDAQ market. And there are general changes as industry change or largest stockholders change in the corporate name
change firms. We find that name change firms have negative discretional accrual and especially name change firms with loss-reporting are significantly negatively
associated with discretional accruals. This result means that there is difference among the purposes of corporate name change.
And we also investigate the effect the interplay of multiple factors on discretional accruals when corporate name
change purpose is interplayed, therefore we find that corporate name change of largest stockholders change with loss-reporting firms are significantly negatively
558
related with discretional accrual. It means that the relationship between corporate name change with loss-reporting and discretional accruals is strongest among other
purposes. This result calls the validity of the corporate name change by loss- reporting firms in question.
Our study adds to the literature in the sense that it is the first attempt to examine the characteristics of firms changing their names and to investigate the impact of
corporate name changes on discretionary accruals.
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Table 3 The Comparison of corporate name change and non-changing firms
Variables Sample firms
n=401 Control firms
n=4098 t-test
Mann-Whitney test Z
CFO -0.18
0.03 -6.67
-13.24 LEV
0.51 0.42
4.66 -4.64
NI -0.52
-0.05 -9.41
-15.95 OP
-0.13 0.03
-8.84 -14.17
ROA -0.51
-0.07 -8.49
-15.62
Definition of variables CFO= the ratio of cash from operations to the beginning total assetsBTA; LEV=
the ration of debts to total assets; NI= net income to BTA; OP= operating income to BTA; ROA= net income to total assets.
561
Table 4 Descriptive Statistics
definition of variables NC= corporate name change firms; LC= loss-reporting firms in corporate name change; IC= industry change through consolidation or diversification in corporate name change; OC=
the largest stockholders change in corporate name change; CFO= the ratio of cash from operations to the beginning total assetsBTA; LEV= the ration of debts to total assets; NI= net income to BTA; OP=
operating income to BTA; ROA= net income to total assets; TA= total accruals; accruals are deflated by the BTA; DA12, 3= discretional accrual through model 12, 3; SIZE= natural log of the total assets at
the end of the year; GRW= the growth of sales.
Panel 1 Sample firms n = 401 mean
min median
max sd
LC 0.73
0.00 1.00
1.00 0.44
IC 0.14
0.00 0.00
1.00 0.34
OC 0.60
0.00 1.00
1.00 0.48
DA1 -0.23
-7.09 -0.11
14.33 1.09
DA2 -0.25
-7.06 -0.13
10.91 1.01
DA3 -0.04
-6.20 -0.03
14.57 1.11
TA -0.33
-7.26 -0.17
9.48 0.96
CFO -0.18
-8.54 -0.07
3.59 0.64
LEV 0.57
0.00 0.45
3.62 0.37
OP -0.64
-32.23 -0.17
0.64 2.20
ROA -0.51
-7.92 -0.22
0.35 1.10
SIZE 23.93
20.35 24.01
28.78 1.01
GRW 0.28
-0.99 0.06
6.81 1.10
Panel 2 Total firms n = 4,498 mean
min median
max sd
NC 0.09
0.00 0.00
1.00 0.28
LC 0.38
0.00 0.00
1.00 0.48
IC 0.01
0.00 0.00
1.00 0.11
OC 0.05
0.00 0.00
1.00 0.23
DA1 -0.04
-11.12 -0.00
14.33 0.49
DA2 -0.03
-10.68 0.00
10.92 0.46
DA3 0.01
-8.76 0.00
14.57 0.45
TA -0.10
-12.86 -0.04
9.48 0.49
CFO 0.01
-8.54 0.03
7.66 0.32
LEV 0.43
0.00 0.40
5.68 0.33
OP -0.11
-32.22 0.03
0.76 1.22
ROA -0.11
-9.24 0.02
0.65 0.62
SIZE 24.44
20.26 24.42
28.85 0.87
GRW 0.19
0.99 0.08
6.81 0.73
562
Table 5 Correlation Coefficients
1 PearsonSpearman correlation coefficients are reported abovebelow the diagonal. Statistical significance at 0.05 leveltwo-tailed.
2 Definition of variables; NC= corporate name change firms; LC= loss-reporting firms in corporate name change; IC= industry change through consolidation or diversification in corporate name change; OC=
the largest stockholders change in corporate name change; CFO= the ratio of cash from operations to the beginning total assetsBTA; LEV= the ration of debts to total assets; NI= net income to BTA; OP=
operating income to BTA; DA12, 3= discretional accrual through model 12, 3; SIZE= natural log of the total assets at the end of the year; GRW= the growth of sales.
Panel 1: Sample firms n= 401
DA1 DA2
DA3 TA
LC IC
OC CFO
LEV OP
SIZE GRW
DA1 1
0.93 0.80
0.93 -0.46
-0.00 -0.21
0.04 -0.15
0.38 0.05
0.07 DA2
0.96 1
0.75 0.91
-0.49 -0.00
-0.26 0.12
-0.17 0.43
0.11 0.05
DA3 0.90
0.85 1
0.72 -0.24
-0.00 -0.07
-0.22 -0.08
0.08 -0.05
-0.00 TA
0.97 0.96
0.85 1
-0.51 0.00
-0.30 0.08
-0.17 0.44
0.12 0.11
LC -0.27
-0.29 -0.16
-0.29 1
0.03 0.33
-0.49 0.10
-0.65 -0.16
-0.25 IC
-0.00 0.01
-0.00 0.00
0.03 1
0.10 0.00
0.07 0.04
0.02 0.07
OC -0.11
-0.14 -0.03
-0.17 0.33
0.10 1
-0.28 0.03
-0.35 -0.34
-0.11 CFO
-0.37 -0.26
-0.45 -0.25
-0.21 0.00
-0.15 1
-0.05 0.66
0.42 0.22
LEV -0.15
-0.15 -0.01
-0.17 0.14
0.04 0.06
-0.08 1
-0.03 0.09
0.05 OP
0.07 0.07
-0.00 0.09
-0.16 -0.10
-0.14 0.15
-0.16 1
0.29 0.41
SIZE 0.05
0.05 -0.00
0.13 -0.12
0.01 -0.31
0.38 0.02
0.11 1
-0.00 GRW
-0.01 -0.01
-0.04 -0.02
-0.16 0.06
-0.03 0.05
-0.00 0.18
-0.13 1
Panel 2: Total firms n= 4,499
DA1 DA2
DA3 TA
NC LC
IC OC
CFO LEV
OP SIZE
GRW DA1
1 0.92
0.85 0.82
-0.13 -0.37
-0.05 -0.14
-0.19 -0.13
0.27 0.05
0.09 DA2
0.94 1
0.76 0.78
-0.15 -0.44
-0.06 -0.17
-0.07 -0.14
0.33 0.08
0.09 DA3
0.88 0.80
1 0.67
-0.04 -0.11
-0.01 -0.04
-0.42 -0.02
0.01 -0.03
0.06 TA
0.90 0.86
0.78 1
-0.16 -0.49
-0.06 -0.19
-0.20 -0.16
0.37 0.09
0.17 NC
-0.13 -0.16
-0.04 -0.15
1 0.22
0.36 0.76
-0.20 0.07
-0.22 -0.17
-0.02 LC
-0.26 -0.30
-0.10 -0.30
0.22 1
0.09 0.23
-0.50 0.23
-0.72 -0.17
-0.27 IC
-0.05 -0.05
-0.01 -0.05
0.35 0.08
1 0.33
-0.07 0.05
-0.07 -0.06
0.01 OC
-0.15 -0.18
-0.04 -0.17
0.77 0.23
0.33 1
-0.20 0.06
-0.23 -0.19
-0.04 CFO
-0.25 -0.08
-0.40 -0.19
-0.20 -0.29
-0.07 -0.20
1 -0.23
0.61 0.15
0.20 LEV
-0.25 -0.27
-0.53 -0.26
0.10 0.25
0.04 0.08
-0.15 1
-0.24 0.13
0.01 OP
0.14 0.16
0.00 0.15
-0.17 -0.27
-0.14 -0.20
0.22 -0.18
1 0.17
0.36 SIZE
0.09 0.11
0.10 0.15
-0.19 -0.17
-0.06 -0.21
0.21 0.04
0.14 1
-0.00 GRW
0.02 0.02
0.02 -0.02
0.03 -0.09
0.04 0.01
0.02 0.00
0.13 -0.10
1
563
Table 6 Regression of the effect corporate name change on discretional accruals
Definition of variables NC= a value 1 when a firm change corporate name; CFO= the ratio of cash from operations to the beginning total assetsBTA; LEV= the ration of debts to total assets; SIZE=
natural log of the total assets at the end of the year; GRW= the growth of sales; DA12, 3= discretional accrual through model 12, 3.
DA1DA2, DA3= b +b
1
NC+b
2
CFOit+b
3
LEV
it
+b4SIZE
it
+b
5
GROW
it
+e
it
DA1 DA2
DA3 Intercept
-1.96 -10.15 -1.15 -6.23
-1.17 -6.82 NC
-0.25 -10.49 -0.18 -8.07
-0.15 -7.15 CFO
-0.55 -25.50 -0.64 -33.36
LEV -0.46 -21.70
-0.38 -18.53 -0.17 -8.73
SIZE 0.09 11.10
0.05 7.02 0.05 7.38
GRW 0.03 3.74
0.02 2.51 0.03 3.10
Adj. R
2
0.20 0.10
0.20 n= 4642
564
Table 7 Regression of discretionary accruals on the reasons for corporate name changes
Definition of variables LC=a value 1 when a firm report current loss; IC=a value 1 when a firm change industry; OC=a value 1 when a firm change largest stockholders; CFO= the ratio of cash from
operations to the beginning total assetsBTA; LEV= the ration of debts to total assets; SIZE= natural log of the total assets at the end of the year; GRW= the growth of sales; DA12, 3= discretional accrual
through model 12, 3.
DA1DA2, DA3
it
= b +b
1
LC+b
2
IC+b
3
OC+b
4
CFOit+b
5
LEV
it
+b
6
SIZE
it
+b
7
GROW
it
+e
it
DA1 DA2
DA3 Intercept
-4.91 -3.93 -0.01 -0.01
-4.40 -3.51 LC
-0.81 -7.27 -0.60 -5.24
-0.63 -5.75 IC
-0.03 -0.26 -0.09 -0.86
0.06 0.58 OC
0.06 0.47 0.10 0.75
0.02 0.12 CFO
-0.90 -11.57 -0.94 -12.19
LEV -0.45 -3.67
-0.35 -2.79 -0.08 -0.65
SIZE 0.22 4.36
0.02 0.36 0.19 3.78
GRW -0.02 -0.41
-0.05 -1.12 -0.03 -0.78
Adj. R
2
0.31 0.10
0.30
565
Table 8 Regression of discretionary accruals on the reasons for corporate name changes with interaction terms
DA1DA2, DA3
it
= b +b
1
LC+b
2
IC+b
3
OC+b
4
LCIC+b
5
LCOC+b
6
ICOC+b
7
LCICOC +b
8
CFOit+b
9
LEV
it
+b
10
SIZE
it
+b
11
GROW
it
+e
it
DA1 DA2
DA3 Intercept
-5.32 -4.29 -0.29 -0.24
-4.66 -3.77 LC
-0.50 -3.33 -0.38 -2.38
-0.40 -2.63 OC