Publications

Researchers have long tried to define the impact of corporate diversification on firm value. Academic papers mainly concentrate on the effects of corporate diversification in mature markets while its consequences in emerging capital markets are less explored. This article presents the results of an empirical analysis of corporate diversification strategies of a sample of companies from BRIC countries that expanded via acquisitions during 2000–2013. We contribute to the existing literature by examining the effects of corporate diversification on firm value during the pre- and post-crisis periods. In line with other studies, we distinguish between related and unrelated diversification and in contrast to them we single out and separately analyze horizontal, conglomerate and vertical acquisitions. Based on a sample of 319 deals initiated by companies from BRIC countries, we found positive (3.32% and 9.01%) and statistically significant cumulative abnormal returns for conglomerate acquisitions during the pre- and post-crisis periods, correspondingly. We also found that the market reacts positively and statistically significant to the announcements of horizontal and vertical integration only during the pre-crisis period.

In recent years corporate international diversification has become a widely used growth strategy for companies from both developed and emerging markets. Nevertheless, academic papers provide contradictory results on whether the influence of international diversification on firm performance is positive or negative. This chapter presents the results of an empirical analysis of corporate international diversification – performance relationship on a sample of companies from BRIC countries, which expanded geographically in 2005-2015. We contribute to the existing literature by applying a new methodology to identify the performance effects of corporate international diversification based on an economic profit measure. The results indicate that there is a non-linear relationship between the degree of international diversification and economics profit spread. Additionally, for BRIC companies international diversification on average does not have a significant impact on expected long term performance, measured by Tobin’s Q.  

This chapter surveys the recent trends in the literature on the performance of M&A deals in developed and emerging capital markets. This literature is voluminous, diverse and challenging. We focus on the transactions within one country – domestic M&As – in particular focusing on the methods that the researchers use to estimate whether M&A deals promote efficiency gains or not. We discuss the research instruments which allow an assessment of the effects of M&As on firm operating performance and on firm value. Analysing the results of latest empirical studies we reveal that target shareholders gain significantly in M&A deals. The evidence suggests that in most cases acquiring shareholders receive negative or insignificant returns in the short-run in developed capital markets, while in emerging economies acquiring shareholders mostly gain in M&A deals. Operating performance analysis reveals mixed results in developed and emerging capital markets, while the analysis of papers which use value performance indicators show the destruction of company value due to M&As in developed and emerging capital markets. The review also analyses studies that examine the relationship between different methods.

This chapter contributes to the literature on M&A performance by examining the impact of M&A deals on company value over the long-run in developed and emerging economies. Examining a sample of 153 and 125 deals from Western European and emerging capital markets respectively, 2002-2013, and employing economic profit as a performance measure,we find that transactions in developed markets create more value for shareholders than M&As in emerging economies over the two-year period surrounding the deals. After adjustments for industry trends, economic profit significantly decreases for firms in emerging capital markets, taking negative values, while for companies in developed markets we observe insignificant improvements in economic profit values following acquisitions. These results indicate that companies in emerging capital markets cannot achieve the planned synergies, integrate successfully and improve the performance of the combined firms. We find that industry and geographical diversification influence the performance of M&A deals in emerging and developed countries respectively. We also find that the effects on company value differ for stock and cash deals, and for high- and low-tech transactions in both markets. Testing the impact of economic crisis of 2007-2008 on the performance of M&A deals we reveal that the adjusted economic profit does not differ significantly between pre- and post-crisis M&As.

The industrial development of emerging markets has been a powerful driver for mergers and acquisitions. The contributions collected in this book assess major M&A deals in the largest emerging capital markets (Brazil, Russia, India, China) and their role in shareholder value creation in the markets’ specific business environments. In addition, the book explores various dimensions of M&A deals in order to summarize the main trends in corporate control markets in the largest emerging countries, and how they differ from those in developed countries; to identify deal-performance relationships and the determinants of success or failure; to reveal the drivers for the premium in M&A deals; and to capture market responses to different M&A strategies. By doing so, the book makes a significant contribution to the literature, which has to date largely focused on developed markets.

The literature on M&As provides ample evidence for the variability of premiums paid in M&As deals over time and in different types of deals. Most work has been done on the data from developed markets. Using a sample of M&A deals in the largest emerging markets (BRIC) for 2000–2015, we examine three types of factors (acquirer characteristics, target characteristics, deal characteristics). To measure the premium, the event studies method is used, therefore the data on cumulative average abnormal returns (CAAR) is adjusted to the market movements in each respective country. We focus on three levels of acquired stakes (>25%, >50% and 100%). The study contributes to a deeper understanding the differences in the size of premiums among the countries and the interaction of the main determinants which influence the magnitude of the premium. The regression results document positive drivers of the size of the premium including, the percentage of the stake and industry relatedness. Besides these stylized determinants, the premium increases if the deal is made in a crisis year and by a domestic bidder. The negative determinants include the target size, its financial leverage and the pre-bid stake of the acquirer (toehold).

Currently, companies actively support the application of the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR), but are guided by different values and expectations. The increased number of CSR reports published has given rise to discussions about the motivation of managers behind their publication, as well as the veracity of the information presented in these reports. Understanding the determinants of corporate governance associated with obtaining an independent assessment of reporting can affect the further dissemination of standards for non-financial reporting and the development of services provided by consulting and auditing companies. The paper reveals the dependence of the decision to evaluate the CSR report by third parties and compliance with GRI standards on corporate governance factors.

The chapter reveals the problems of assessing and managing interest rate risk of a commercial bank.The chapter reveals the problems of assessing and managing interest rate risk of a commercial bank.The chapter reveals the problems of assessing and managing interest rate risk of a commercial bank.

In our research, we study what macroeconomic factors drive and influence the credit cycle. Also, our study contains four sections with theoretical and empirical parts, in which we describe how to measure credit cycles for developed  and developing countries, and then we introduce an important indicator credit gap. Our results show the comparative analysis of credit cycles between different countries with various economic growth, and we built up an econometric model, which shows us the impact of macroeconomic factors according to credit cycles  for developing and developed economies.

This paper identifies and analyzes the key factors of the sectoral structure of ownership, the effect of the CEO and competition between owners at the sub-sectoral level and the size of the business. Based on an example of the manufacturing and construction sectors we show a positive effect on the company's financial stability of the share ownership of the CEO (in comparison with average sectoral share). We also show that in the case of a more uniform distribution of property between the owners, a positive effect is achieved in terms of the stability of the company. Thus, companies with a group of ownerfounders are the most favorable structure for the formation of the corporate governance system in Russia.

We consider the problem of short term immunization of a bond-like obligation with respect to changes in interest rates using a portfolio of bonds. In the case that the zero-coupon yield curve belongs to a fixed low-dimensional manifold, the problem is widely known as parametric immunization. Parametric immunization seeks to make the sensitivities of the hedged portfolio price with respect to all model parameters equal to zero. However, within a popular approach of nonparametric (smoothing spline) term structure estimation, parametric hedging is not applicable right away. We present a nonparametric approach to hedging a bond-like obligation allowing for a general form of the term structure estimator with possible smoothing. We show that our approach yields the standard duration based immunization in the limit when the amount of smoothing goes to infinity. We also recover the industry best practice approach of hedging based on key rate durations as another particular case. The hedging portfolio is straightforward to calculate using only basic linear algebra operations.

The paper illustrates how a Bayesian approach to yield fitting can be implemented in a non-parametric framework with automatic smoothing inferred from the data. It also briefly illustrates the advantages of such an an approach using real data.

The paper uses an infinite dimensional (functional space) approach to inverse problems. Numerical computations are carried out using a Markov Chain Monte-Carlo algorithm with several tweaks to ensure good performance. The model explicitly uses bid-ask spreads to allow for observation errors and provides automatic smoothing based on them.

A non-parametric framework allows to capture complex shapes of zero-coupon yield curves typical for emerging markets. Bayesian approach allows to assess the precision of estimates, which is crucial for some applications. Examples of estimation results are reported for three different bond markets: liquid (German), medium liquidity (Chinese) and illiquid (Russian).

The result shows that infinite-dimensional Bayesian approach to term structure estimation is feasible. Market practitioners could use this approach to gain more insight into interest rates term structure. For example, they could now be able to complement their non-parametric term structure estimates with Bayesian confidence intervals, which would allow them to assess statistical significance of their results.

The model does not require parameter tuning during estimation. It has its own parameters, but they are to be selected during model setup.

This article is devoted to the creation of intelligent modelling tools for decision support in the evaluation of intellectual projects submitted for financing, as based on qualitatively defined characteristics. The economic and mathematical models that form the basis of the toolkit are constructed using the mathematical apparatus of fuzzy logic, which allows for the description of poorly structured knowledge of specialists, as well as their application in solving questions about the extent of the impact of the proposed projects on the environment. The authors classify investment projects according to the degree of impact on the environment, the environmental criteria required by the investor for the evaluation of investment projects, and the formal formulation of the problem of evaluation of investment projects when taking into account the environmental factor. The toolkit was created based on the concept of intellectualization, where economic and mathematical models for the evaluation of investment projects are programmatically implemented via the tools and functions available in the MATLAB package.

We study alternative arbitrage strategies for stocks of Russian companies and the corresponding depositary receipts issued in European exchanges (‘mirror trades’). We provide evidence for significant arbitrage opportunities in Russia, and the potential returns are higher when the depository receipts are underpriced relative to stocks on the domestic market. Such asymmetry in arbitrage returns may be a consequence of money expatriation from Russia using these ‘mirror trades’ even when they are unprofitable, creating further mispricing. We also show that the long-short ‘buy-and-hold’ strategies, although being risky, generate returns which are about twice as high as the returns to the conversion strategies. Although the arbitrage returns have declined over time, they are still positive and generally higher than the market returns. Low liquidity of Russian depositary receipts on European exchanges is a significant barrier to arbitrage.

The paper examines how the type of ownership affects the efficiency of Russian banks. Using bank-quarter data for selected banks in the period 2004–2015, we combine stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) methodology with an intermediary approach to assess both profit and cost efficiency scores. Our key findings show that foreign-owned banks are the most profit efficient, and state-owned banks efficiently manage costs compared to other banks. These results are robust when we consider these banks in terms of risk preferences and specialization.

Despite of the fact that the history of Initial Coin Offering (ICO) is short, new modification of it has already suggested. According to the ICORating , in the second half of 2018, the profitability of investments in blockchain startups decreased by 22%, and 58% of ICO projects announced in Q4 2018 were not able to raise more than 100,000 USD. Moreover, in Q4 2018 40% of projects with previously announced ICOs have already deleted their social network accounts and websites. The founder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin (2015), who started the first ICO, proposed a new way of decentralized fundraising called DAICO in 2018. This new model will include elements of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO), and its purpose will be to minimize the difficulties and risks associated with the ICO. At the same time, in 2018 another model of financing appeared called Initial Exchange Offering (IEO) in order to minimize risks, problems of liquidity and the postponement of the listing of the tokens at the end of tokensale step. More than 70 IEOs listed on ICObench with average rating of 3.6 and 42 IEOs have been ended and raised $266 million in total. Nevertheless, there three types of tokens 95% of ICO projects are utility-based token. This makes ICO comparable to crowfunding. In order to be more attractive for investors the focus on a new wave of ICO projects is on the security type of tokens. The security token is any cryptocurrency that pays dividends, profits, shares or interest or invests in any other asset that also generates profits. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) use the Howey Test and concludes the securities token are securities in contract to classical utility token of ICO projects. In order to back by real assets and follow the SEC's guidance on compliance, issuance, and trading new model is called Security Token Offering (STO) and differs from ICO. All three new models are a new focus for small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) and investors. The absence of any type of academic works emphasizes the relevance and scientific novelty of the forthcoming research. The contribution to the existing literature is the systematization of information and comparison analyses of ICO, DAOICO, IEO and STO by method of case study.

In developing economies, which rely considerably on the dollar and euro, changes in the currency structure of bank deposits may be strategic and may work as an additional market discipline mechanism. This study sheds light on this currency shifts mechanism in the Russian market for personal deposits. Using data on 900 banks for 2005–2015, we show that less risky banks demonstrate higher growth in the share of deposits denominated in foreign currency (FX), even when the exchange rate volatility component is extracted. The shifts are supported by the quantity-based mechanism as more reliable banks enjoy higher FX deposit growth.

We analyze whether bank familiarity affects depositor behavior during financial crisis. Familiarity is measured by regional or local cues in the bank’s name. Depositor behavior is measured by the depositor’s sensitivity to observable bank risk (depositor discipline). Using 2001–2010 bank-level and region-level data for Russia, we find that depositors of familiar banks become less sensitive to bank risk during a financial crisis relative to depositors of unfamiliar banks. To validate that our results stem from a flight to familiarity during crisis and not from implicit guarantees from regional governments, we split our sample along the lines of regional affinity and trust in local governments. The flight to familiarity effect is strongly confirmed in the subsample of regions with strong regional affinity, while the effect is absent in the subsample of regions with more trust in regional and local governments, lending support to the thesis that our results are driven by a flight to familiarity rather than by implicit guarantees.