控股股东股权质押影响高管薪酬——业绩敏感性吗?

Does the Controlling Shareholder Equity Pledge Affect-Executive Pay-For-Performance Sensitivity?

以高管薪酬—业绩敏感性为切入点,本文深入分析控股股东股权质押对公司治理水平的影响及其路径。本文以2003-2016年沪深两市上市公司年度数据为研究样本,研究发现,与不存在控股股东股权质押的公司相比,存在控股股东股权质押的上市公司高管薪酬—业绩敏感性更弱,但这种现象只在非国有上市公司中存在,上述结论在尽可能控制内生性问题后依然成立。在进一步的分析中,本文还发现,在控股股东股权质押的上市公司高管薪酬的增幅更大,且薪酬增幅高的公司掏空程度和盈余管理水平也更严重。本文的研究结论表明,控股股东股权质押后出于掏空或者规避控制权转移风险的考虑,会干预上市公司的财务决策,从而降低薪酬激励的有效性,弱化公司治理。

In order to broadenfinancing channels ofthe shareholders and relieve its financing constraints,China s“Guarantee Law”and“Property Law”provisions that“legally transferable shares”can be pledged.Because of the equity pledge does not need other shareholder agree and without need the regulatory approval,the control rights and voting rights of shareholders pledge after shareholder equity is not affected by the shareholder equity pledge,the equity pledge is very popular by the shareholderin recent years,and developing rapidlyin the A stock market.The key element of the equity pledge business is the stock price.And the stock price is always fluctuation.When the stock price falls,the pledged shareholder has to repurchase the equity pledges or additional guarantee tokeep control ofprivate-interest Therefore,when the stock price decline,the equity pledge of controlling shareholders in order to avoid the transfer of control,is likely to use their control power to intervene in the financial decisions of listed companies(such as:informationdisclosure,earningsmanagement,cash holdings level,tax avoidance strategy,or suspension etc.)to maintain or raise the stock price;secondly,the equity pledge by the controlling shareholder maybe face financial distress,financial distress of the controlling shareholders of listed companies are more likely to be tunneling the listed companies;thirdly,the equity pledged would result the separation of cash flow rights and control rights,separation of the rights increase also will result the pledge controlling shareholders of listed companies increased tunneling the company.Infact,although the controlling shareholders hold the right of appointing executives,they usually do not directly participate in the daily operation and management of companies.Executives as a company insider,not only responsible for the company s daily operation and management activities,but also holds a large number of firm s private information.The controlling shareholder of equity pledge is required to cooperate with executives whether suffer financial distress and tunneling of listed companies,or to avoid the transfer of control rights,to intervene in the financial decisions of listed companies or to maintain their share price.All these activities require executives to cooperate,otherwise they will be difficult to implement.What is the impact of this on the level of corporate governance?Unfortunately,there is little literature on the systematic and comprehensive exploration of this problem.Therefore,in order to test the relationship betweenequity pledge of the controlling shareholder how to influence the corporate governance,this paper use Shanghai and Shenzhen listed companies from 2003 to 2016 annual data as the researchobject,and the use of executive pay-performance sensitivity to measure the level of corporate governance,and test the equity pledge of the controlling shareholder how to influence on executive pay-performance sensitivity and its path.The empirical study found that,compared with the existing controlling shareholder equity pledge,there is the sensitivity of executive compensation of listed companies,the performance of equity pledge is weaker,but this phenomenon just exists only in non-state-owned enterprises,theconclusionstill robust after controlling the endogenous probleml as much as possiblein using instrumental variable method and fixed effect model.In further analysis,this paper also finds that the increase of executive pay is greater in the listed companies with controlling shareholder s equity pledge,and the company s tunneling degree and earnings management level are also more serious.The conclusion of this paper shows that controlling stockholders equity pledge,whethertotunneling the listed company or to avoid the risk of control transfer,would intervene the financial decisions of listed companies,and reduce the effectiveness of compensation incentivesweaken corporate governance.This study finds that theoretically,it enriches the economic consequences of equity pledge,and helps to improve the equity pledge system and corporate governance mechanism in practice.