Regulatory Sanctions on Independent Directors and Their Consequences to the Director Labor Market: Evidence from China

We investigate the regulatory sanctions imposed on independent directors for their firms’ financial frauds in China. These regulatory sanctions are prima-facie evidence of significant lapses in business ethics. During the period 2003–2010, 302-person-time independent directors were penalized by the...

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Главные авторы: Firth, Michael Anthony (Автор) ; Wong, Sonia M. L. (Автор) ; Xin, Qingquan (Автор) ; Yick, Ho Yin (Автор)
Формат: Электронный ресурс Статья
Язык:Английский
Проверить наличие: HBZ Gateway
Interlibrary Loan:Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany)
Опубликовано: 2016
В: Journal of business ethics
Год: 2016, Том: 134, Выпуск: 4, Страницы: 693-708
Другие ключевые слова:B Independent directors
B Business Ethics
B G30
B Regulatory sanctions
B G34
B K22
B M41
B J33
B Reputational damage in the labor market
B Financial fraud
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Итог:We investigate the regulatory sanctions imposed on independent directors for their firms’ financial frauds in China. These regulatory sanctions are prima-facie evidence of significant lapses in business ethics. During the period 2003–2010, 302-person-time independent directors were penalized by the regulator (the China Securities Regulatory Commission—the CSRC), and the two stock exchanges. We find that the independent directors with accounting experiences are more likely to be penalized by the CSRC, though they do not suffer more severe penalties than do the other sanctioned independent directors. We also find that independent directors suffer less severe penalties than do the insider directors. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that the sanctions on independent directors are tied to their assumed ethical and legal responsibilities. Following a regulatory sanction, penalized independent directors experience a significant decline in the number of other board seats held. However, they can gain board seats in better quality firms. We find that interlocked firms that share penalized independent directors with the fraud firm do not suffer from a valuation decline. Overall, our results suggest that regulatory sanctions have not triggered further sanctions on the penalized directors in the labor market but they have, instead, created a disincentive for these directors to serve on the company boards of high-risk firms.
ISSN:1573-0697
Второстепенные работы:Enthalten in: Journal of business ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10551-014-2391-5