소유지배괴리도가 자기주식취득과 현금배당에 미치는 영향

This study seeks to explore how share repurchase and dividend policies are influenced by the disproportionately stronger voting rights of controlling shareholders. Prior literature shows that stock markets in general respond favorably to a company’s announcement of share repurchases for a short-term period. In Korea, however, some studies examining the long-term performance of the stock repurchases show mixed results, with more negative relationship between share repurchase and long-term performance. Although share repurchases and cash dividends have been perceived as similar devices to distribute profits,evidence from prior studies indicates that the two devices have different impact on the capital markets. The major differences between share repurchases and dividends can be characterized as follows. First, controlling shareholders can repurchase shares with smaller cash than dividends because share repurchases are usually limited to minor proportion of outstanding shares. Second, share repurchases are not subject to cash flow restrictions at the end of fiscal year because buying and selling of treasury stocks can be made rather freely throughout the year. Third, share repurchases are relatively more discretionary than dividends because dividends are considered compulsory to meet the expectations of shareholders. Based on the preceding analogy, we can argue that stock repurchases can be utilized opportunistically by controlling shareholders, especially when they can exercise voting rights more than their cash flow rights. Our main variables of interest include the wedge which is measured as the gap between the voting rights and cash-flow rights of controlling shareholders (GAP), net income (NI), and cash flow from operations (CFO). Control variables included in our model are growth of sales (GROW), leverage ratio (LEV), firm size (SIZE), foreign ownership (FOR), the volatility of stock price (VOL) and price to book value ratio (PBR). The main test methods used in our study are mean-difference tests and multiple linear regression analyses. The test sample consists of 327firm-year observations, selected from the Korea Stock Exchange (KSE) companies during the period of 2004 to 2006. The empirical evidence shows that firms for which the gap is big tend to repurchase more shares. This might be because controlling shareholders with disproportionately stronger voting rights are better able to exploit external shareholders. Firms for which the gap is low, on the contrary, distribute more cash dividends to shareholders. We find that share-repurchasing firms without cash dividends have significantly lower operating cash flows than the control groups. We may infer that firms with inferior cash flows tend to utilize share repurchase to deceive investors. Overall, the results of this study show that controlling shareholders use share repurchases as a device of temporary opportunism.