Firms' Choices to Cross-list Stocks on the U.S. and the U.K. Markets: An Earnings Quality Perspective

Abstract

This thesis investigates some accounting issues that arise from firms’ choices to cross-list stocks on the U.S. and the U.K. markets. Prior research shows that the benefits of cross-listing include a more liquid stock market, an increase in investor recognition, a decrease in the cost of capital, and a commitment to better corporate governance practices. However, the extent to which cross-listing can be used as an effective bonding mechanism is closely related to the choice of cross-listing destinations. Specifically, I hypothesise that differences in firm characteristics, accounting standards setting procedures, and the legal and regulatory environments between the U.S. and the U.K. markets lead to the expectation that firms cross-listed in the U.S. markets have better earnings quality than firms cross-listed in the U.K. In the context of this thesis, earnings quality refers to how precisely reported earnings convey a firm’s true economic performance, and it is measured by models of accruals, earnings persistence and predictability, smoothness, and target beating. The results suggest the following. First, firms use accruals-based earnings management techniques to boost their earnings in the cross-listing year, but such evidence is only observed for firms cross-listed on the U.K markets. A further examination shows that, for the U.K. sample, the extent of earnings management is influenced by whether a firm raises new equity capital at cross-listing, while no such evidence is found for the U.S. sample. Second, the results provide mixed evidence that cross-listing firms have higher earnings quality than their home country counterparts that are not cross-listed. For firms cross-listed in the U.S., the differences in earnings quality are greater in the post-SOX period. Third, this thesis directly compares firms that choose between different cross-listing destinations and finds that firms cross-listed in the U.S. have higher earnings quality than firms cross-listed in the U.K. Fourth, home-country institutions are found to have a significant influence on cross-listing firms’ reporting behaviour. The results are robust to controlling for innate factors known to affect the quality of earnings. Some interpretation issues arise when different measures of earnings quality are used, which shed light on future research directions.