한국상장 중국기업의 이익조정과 가치평가

Sixteen Chinese firms have initiated public offerings in Korean stock market since foreign firms were allowed IPO in Korean securities market. As of 2015, three firms of them have been delisted due to their accounting scandals and other three firms volunteerly delisted because their stock prices were devaluated in Korean market compared to other markets caused by alleged investors’ distrust about financial statements of Chinese firms. Under the assumption that the distrust of Chinese firms resulted from Chinese firms’ earning management around IPO, we investigated whether Chinese IPO firms’ earning management had been higher than that of Korean IPO firms in one year prior to IPO and in the year of IPO by using discretionary accruals as the earnings management proxy measured by the both modified Jones model and Kothari's performance matched model. Our empirical results indicates that Chinese firms listed in Korean market had exhibited significantly higher discretionary accruals than those of Korean firms around IPOs, which means Chinese firms had managed the reported earnings of one year prior to IPO and in the year of IPO using discretionary accruals to increase IPO prices. Further, the earnings management had led to the decline in ROA in the next year of IPO, thereby resulting in significant investment loss of Korean investors. Our study also showed that the degree of decrease in ROA of Chinese IPO firms had been greater than that of Korean firms. We next found that the relationship between stock prices and reported earnings of Chinese IPO firms became weaker after the Chinese “Gosum accounting scandal” which was a crucial event that triggered Korean investors’ distrust of financial statements of Chinese firms. We have also found that Tobin’s Q ratios of Chinese firms were significantly lower than those of Korean firms after the scandal, suggesting that Chinese firms suffered from devaluation of their stock prices after the scandal. The devaluation of Chinese firms in Korean market had led voluntary delistings of additional Chinese firms, their movements to stock markets of other countries and, to make things worse, the stop of new IPO of Chinese firm in Korean market. As a result, many Korean investors who invested in the stocks of Chinese IPO firms had made losses and lost the opportunity to invest new Chinese IPO firms in Korean market. We conjecture there are three plausible reasons for Chinese firms to choose Korean market for IPO rather than Chinese market. First, Chinese IPO firms applying for Korean market may not be so financially sound as those applying for Chinese market because the listing criteria to Korean market is relatively easier than the criteria of Chinese market. Also, Chinese firms that were urgent in financing IPO money would choose Korean market of which IPO process is generally faster than that of Chinese stock market. Second, the complicated corporate governance may have caused the earnings management. If Chinese firms intend to list in foreign stock markets, they need approvals from Chinese financial authority. Due to difficulty with getting the approval, they set up the holding companies in other countries to get around the difficulty and list these holding companies in foreign stock markets including Korean market. This practice may result in the irresponsibility of the compliance. Finally, the probable low accounting quality of Chinese firms could be attributable to the difference between K-IFRS and C-IFRS. Chinese firms have to prepare financial statements of both standards, but they may not fully understand K-IFRS and Korean auditors have difficulty with auditing Chinese firms that are located geographically far away and culturally unfamiliar. Collectively, empirical results of our study imply that audit process for foreign pre-IPO firms should be more thorough and the policy makers should tighten screening criteria in examining accounting reports of foreign IPO firms.