Essays on understanding financial architecture

This dissertation is composed of three essays related to Financial Architecture. The first essay, analysed in the first chapter of the thesis, contributes to the literature on Efficient Market Hypothesis and in particular in understanding several issues associated with how prices are determined for individual stocks. The chapter, in particular, provides further evidence of price and volume effects associated with index compositional changes by analysing the inclusions (exclusions) from the French CAC40 and SBF120 indices, as well as the FTSE100. I find evidence supporting the price pressure hypothesis associated with index fund rebalancing, but weak or no evidence for the imperfect substitution, liquidity and information hypotheses. The results improve on recent evidence from the S&P500 index. The evidence for the FTSE100 additions shows, in particular, that markets learn about an imminent inclusion and incorporate this information into prices, even before the announcement date. The other two essays of this thesis relate to Corporate Governance issues. Chapters 2 and 3, in particular, analyze some aspects of two corporate governance mechanisms: ownership concentration and managerial labour market. Chapter 2 provides an overview of the evolution of control in listed Slovenian corporations and evaluates the impact of the current changes in ownership on firm performance. Ownership and control has been concentrating in most transition countries. This consolidation of control introduces changes in the power distribution within privatised firms and, most importantly, redirects the corporate governance problem to a conflict between large and small shareholders. The chapter evaluate the ownership changes in Slovenian privatised firms through an analysis of stock price reactions to the entrance of a new blockholder (the shared benefits of control) and through an estimation of the premiums paid for large blocks (the private benefits of control). It provides evidence and discuss the reasons for the failures of the privatization investment funds in implementing control over firm managers and in promoting the restructuring of firms in the first post-privatization years. Chapter 3 concentrates on one specific aspect of the managerial labour market: monetary remuneration schemes. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the interconnection between pay and corporate governance approaches with respect to the different rules found across European legal systems. The research data on reported pay practices for 2001 among FTSE Eurotop300 companies reveal a reliance on performance-based pay generally and a somewhat variable adoption of share options programs and other equity-based incentive contracts, which generate difficulties in dispersed ownership systems. Furthermore, on the basis of the regulation on executive remuneration disclosure discussed in this chapter and on the basis of the disclosure practices resulting from the data collected for the FTSE Eurotop300 constituents, I construct some disclosure indicators and analyse empirically how country and firm characteristics affect remuneration disclosure.