An examination of the impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act on the attractiveness of U.S. capital markets for foreign firms

Peter Hostak; Thomas Lys; Yong George Yang; Emre Carr

doi:10.1007/s11142-013-9222-2

An examination of the impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act on the attractiveness of U.S. capital markets for foreign firms

Peter Hostak, Thomas Lys^*, Yong George Yang, Emre Carr

^*Corresponding author for this work

Accounting Information and Management

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

29 Scopus citations

Abstract

We examine whether voluntary deregistrations after the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) were intended to benefit common shareholders by avoiding firms' costs of complying with SOX or to protect the control rents of managers or controlling shareholders (MCOs). We find that, compared with foreign firms that maintained their SEC registrations, foreign firms that voluntarily deregistered on average had weaker corporate governance, had a significantly less negative stock market reaction when SOX was passed, and suffered a significant price decline when they announced their decision to deregister. We also find evidence indicating that the deregistrations were (to a lesser extent) motivated by firms' compliance costs related to SOX. Taken together, our results suggest that both agency costs (that is, private benefit of control of the MCOs) and the compliance cost of SOX play a role in motivating foreign firms to withdraw from the U.S. market.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	522-559
Number of pages	38
Journal	Review of Accounting Studies
Volume	18
Issue number	2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s11142-013-9222-2
State	Published - Jun 2013

Keywords

Corporate governance
Cross-listing
Sarbanes-Oxley Act
Voluntary delisting

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Accounting
Business, Management and Accounting(all)

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10.1007/s11142-013-9222-2

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title = "An examination of the impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act on the attractiveness of U.S. capital markets for foreign firms",

abstract = "We examine whether voluntary deregistrations after the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) were intended to benefit common shareholders by avoiding firms' costs of complying with SOX or to protect the control rents of managers or controlling shareholders (MCOs). We find that, compared with foreign firms that maintained their SEC registrations, foreign firms that voluntarily deregistered on average had weaker corporate governance, had a significantly less negative stock market reaction when SOX was passed, and suffered a significant price decline when they announced their decision to deregister. We also find evidence indicating that the deregistrations were (to a lesser extent) motivated by firms' compliance costs related to SOX. Taken together, our results suggest that both agency costs (that is, private benefit of control of the MCOs) and the compliance cost of SOX play a role in motivating foreign firms to withdraw from the U.S. market.",

keywords = "Corporate governance, Cross-listing, Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Voluntary delisting",

author = "Peter Hostak and Thomas Lys and Yang, {Yong George} and Emre Carr",

note = "Funding Information: Acknowledgments Financial supports from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administration Region, China (Project No. CUHK4623/06H), Charlton College of Business, and the Accounting Research Center at the Kellogg School are gratefully acknowledged. We thank Ying Cao, Peter Easton (the editor), Mark Lang, Mingyi Hung, Bin Ke, Jim McKeown, Margaret Neale, Gordon Richardson, Katherine Schipper, T. J. Wong, and especially two anonymous referees, and seminar participants at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Northwestern University, Pennsylvania State University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the Harvard University IMO Conference, and the 2007 AAA Annual Meeting for valuable comments. Copyright: Copyright 2013 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.",

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doi = "10.1007/s11142-013-9222-2",

language = "English (US)",

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N2 - We examine whether voluntary deregistrations after the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) were intended to benefit common shareholders by avoiding firms' costs of complying with SOX or to protect the control rents of managers or controlling shareholders (MCOs). We find that, compared with foreign firms that maintained their SEC registrations, foreign firms that voluntarily deregistered on average had weaker corporate governance, had a significantly less negative stock market reaction when SOX was passed, and suffered a significant price decline when they announced their decision to deregister. We also find evidence indicating that the deregistrations were (to a lesser extent) motivated by firms' compliance costs related to SOX. Taken together, our results suggest that both agency costs (that is, private benefit of control of the MCOs) and the compliance cost of SOX play a role in motivating foreign firms to withdraw from the U.S. market.

AB - We examine whether voluntary deregistrations after the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) were intended to benefit common shareholders by avoiding firms' costs of complying with SOX or to protect the control rents of managers or controlling shareholders (MCOs). We find that, compared with foreign firms that maintained their SEC registrations, foreign firms that voluntarily deregistered on average had weaker corporate governance, had a significantly less negative stock market reaction when SOX was passed, and suffered a significant price decline when they announced their decision to deregister. We also find evidence indicating that the deregistrations were (to a lesser extent) motivated by firms' compliance costs related to SOX. Taken together, our results suggest that both agency costs (that is, private benefit of control of the MCOs) and the compliance cost of SOX play a role in motivating foreign firms to withdraw from the U.S. market.

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An examination of the impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act on the attractiveness of U.S. capital markets for foreign firms

Abstract

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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