Research On Timing Of Leverage Manipulation Of Listed Companies

Leverage manipulation is the subjective manipulation of enterprises to adjust the book asset-liability ratio,meet the government’s deleveraging policy requirements and raise funds smoothly.On the one hand,leverage manipulation covers up enterprises’ real financial leverage and financial risks and misleads investors to make investment decisions that damage their interests.On the other hand,leverage manipulation leads to the increase of hidden debts of enterprises,exacerbates the systemic risks of financial institutions,and is not conducive to the stability of the market economy.The governance of leverage manipulation mainly depends on supervision.However,replacing the head of the CSRC,which is the main body of supervision,often changes the regulatory policies and supervision intensity,thus leaving the space for leverage manipulation for listed companies to change.So,do listed companies deliberately choose or avoid the timing of regulatory changes to implement their leverage manipulation? If so,what does this mean for the optimization of regulatory policy?This paper takes A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2011 to2020 as samples,proposes research hypotheses based on theoretical analysis,and then empirically tests whether there is leverage manipulation behavior in the timing of listed companies in the context of regulatory change.Specifically,this paper takes one year before and after the regulatory change as a window period to examine the changes in the degree of corporate leverage manipulation and study its internal mechanism.Furthermore,this paper analyzes the effect of regulatory change in different situations according to the influence of supervisory governance factors and pressure factors.Specifically,it discusses the differences in corporate leverage manipulation behavior according to institutional investor shareholding,media attention,and external market attention.Through the above analysis,this paper draws the following conclusions:(1)The listed companies have timing leverage manipulation before and after the regulatory change of CSRC.The specific performance is as follows: before the regulatory change of CSRC,the degree of leverage manipulation of enterprises increases significantly;After the regulatory change of CSRC,the degree of leverage manipulation of enterprises decreases significantly.(2)The cost of debt financing mediating between regulatory change and corporate leverage manipulation.That is,before the regulatory change,the cost of debt financing in the credit market increases,and corporate leverage manipulation increases;After the regulatory change,the cost of debt financing falls,and corporate leverage manipulation is weakened.(3)Under different regulatory situations,institutional investors play different roles In leverage manipulation: before regulatory changes,they restrain leverage manipulation by supervision;After the regulatory change,they promote it by exerting pressure.In addition,before the regulatory change,enterprises with high media and external market attention are more inclined to leverage.(4)Corporate leverage significantly improves the scale of corporate credit financing.The main innovations and contributions of this paper are as follows: first,it confirms and explains the timing of leverage manipulation from the perspective of regulatory change,which enriches and deepens the understanding of the influencing factors of leverage manipulation;Second,from the policy suggestions,this paper emphasizes that the strategic response of the regulated should be taken into account when formulating relevant regulatory policies,to make a specific contribution to the perfection of the regulatory concept.