数字金融、控股股东股权质押与掏空治理

Digital Finance,Controlling Shareholder's Equity Pledge and Tunneling Governance

由新兴资本市场股权高度集中所引致的代理冲突是公司治理领域热议的核心问题。除已有基于内外部控制系统的制度设计外,科技与金融的深度融合能否发挥数字金融的治理效应是值得探究的时代议题。从A股非金融类上市公司存在股权质押行为的视角切入,本文系统考察了数字金融对控股股东掏空行为的治理作用。研究发现,数字金融显著抑制了股权质押后控股股东掏空。当公司内部治理结构和外部治理环境较差时,数字金融的治理效应更为突出,表明数字金融能够在现代公司治理机制存在缺漏和不足时发挥补充完善作用。微观机理上,数字金融主要通过信息治理、财务治理和风险治理渠道抑制了股权质押后的控股股东掏空。经济后果分析表明,数字金融在制约控股股东私利行为后,既增强了公司现金股利支付水平,也提升了企业长期投资价值,贴合投资者财富最大化的治理目标。本文在深刻解答数字金融如何赋能公司治理的同时,亦为后续如何更好地保障投资者权益,以促进资本市场高质量发展提供了新的治理决策。

The stock pledge allows the controlling shareholder to enjoy convenient financing while retaining control of the corporate.However,in a capital market with highly concentrated equity ownership,controlling shareholders may engage in tunneling.This leads to widespread infringement of the interests of small and medium-sized investors,resulting in the second type of proxy conflict.To address the agency conflicts arising from the separation of control and ownership,modern corporate governance mechanisms provide rich theoretical guidance from the perspectives of internal governance structures and external governance environments.However,some theories have shown a bias in guiding the practice of corporate governance in China's capital market.In the context of the transformation of traditional corporate governance models empowered by the digital economy,few scholars have paid attention to whether digital finance can play a new role in the field of corporate governance.This paper attempts to examine the corporate governance effects of digital finance from the perspective of tunneling by controlling shareholders after stock pledge,and to reveal its relationship with modern corporate governance mechanisms.Based on unbalanced micro-panel data of Chinese A-share non-financial listed firms from 2011 to 2020,our findings suggest that digital finance significantly inhibits controlling shareholders'tunneling after stock pledge,helping to protect investors'interests.Specifically,when the corporate's internal governance structure(low equity dispersion and deficiencies in internal control)and external governance environment(weaker investor protection and low audit quality)are poor,the governance effect of digital finance is more prominent.This indicates that digital finance not only has its own corporate governance effect,but also improves the shortcomings and deficiencies of modern corporate governance mechanisms.Mechanism analysis shows that digital finance effectively constrains controlling shareholders'embezzlement by improving the quality of corporate information disclosure,easing the financial constraints of firms,and reducing default risk.After overcoming endogeneity and conducting robustness tests with a multidimensional instrumental variable approach,the conclusion of the article remains reliable.Further research also finds that by exerting short-term and long-term governance effects,digital finance inhibits controlling shareholders'embezzlement and enhances the company's cash dividend payment ability and long-term investment value.This means that digital finance helps to protect investors'interests and achieve the corporate governance goal of maximizing shareholder wealth.The contributions of our paper can be listed as follows.First,our research breaks through the existing institutional framework based on firms'internal or external control system,and explores its unique"targeted therapy"mechanism for alleviating agency conflicts from a novel perspective of the governance role digital finance plays,which enriches the theoretical research of corporate governance practice and capital market governance structure.Second,unlike the existing research that directly explores digital finance's mechanisms under normal conditions,this paper incorporates the special scenarios in which the equity pledge of listed companies may transmit signals of financial distress and induce opportunistic behavior,which not only depicts the governance mechanism of digital finance on the private interest behavior of controlling shareholders,but also extends the relevant research of digital finance to corporate governance.Finally,our research deepens the understanding of the dialectical relationship between digital finance and modern corporate governance mechanisms,and provides theoretical references for financial regulatory agencies to shape their digital regulation ideas.It provides experiential insights for investors,as well as offer theoretical foundations for financial regulatory agencies to deal with illegal activities in the capital market.Overall,this paper shows a profound analysis of how digital finance empowers corporate governance,and offers new governance decisions for safeguarding investor rights and promoting high-quality development of the capital market.