지분율 괴리도가 재무분석가의 이익예측치오차에 미치는 영향 (The Effect of the Wedge between Voting Right and Cash Flow Right on Error in Analysts’ Earnings Forecasts)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국회계학회
· 수록지 정보 : 회계학연구 / 35권 / 2호 / 1 ~ 34페이지
· 저자명 : 선우혜정, 최종학, 이병희

초록

본 연구에서는 지배주주의 의결권과 배당권의 차이인 지분율 괴리도로 측정한 기업의 지배구조 수준이 재무분석가가 발표하는 이익예측치의 오차와에 미치는 영향에 대해 살펴보았다. 한국 기업의 지배구조는 피라미드 형태의 계열사 소유구조와 계열사 사이의 상호출자에 의한 지배주주의 간접지배라는 두 가지 특징을 가지고 있다. 그 결과 소유주 또는 지배주주의 배당권(즉, 기업의 현금흐름 중 자신의 실질지분율)은 상대적으로 적은 반면, 의결권(즉, 지배주주의 계열사간 상호출자, 특수 관계자 등을 통한 간접 통제권을 반영한 지분율)은 상대적으로 높다는 특징을 가지고 있다. 이러한 지분율 괴리도가 커지게 되면 지배주주가 소액주주의 권리를 침해하여 자신의 사적 이익을 추구할 가능성이 높아지게 된다. 따라서 기업은 이러한 사실을 외부 이해관계자들로부터 숨기기 위하여 정보공개를 꺼릴 가능성이 존재한다. 그 결과 시장에 이용가능한 정보가 부족하게 되어 재무분석가들이 발표하는 이익예측치의 오차가 상대적으로 더 커질 수 있다. 또한 지분율 괴리도가 큰 경우 기업들이 이익조정을 더욱 활발하게 하기 때문에, 이로 인해 재무분석가들이 발표하는 이익예측치의 오차가 커질 수도 있다. 본 연구에서는 이러한 가설을 실증자료를 이용하여 분석해 보았다.
분석 결과는 다음과 같이 요약된다. 첫째, 예상과 일치하게 지분율 괴리도가 증가할수록 재무분석가의 이익예측치의 오차가 증가하였다. 둘째, 의결권과 배당권을 별도의 변수로 분리하여 분석을 실시한 결과 의결권이 높아질수록 이익예측치의 오차가 증가하였으나 배당권은 이익예측오차와 유의적인 관계를 보이지 않았다. 셋째, 오차를 방향성에 따라 구분해본 결과 지배주주의 의결권은 낙관적 오차와 유의적인 관련성을 가지고 있었지만 비관적 오차와는 유의적인 관련성이 발견되지 않았다. 지배주주의 배당권은 재무분석가가 비관적인 예측을 하거나 낙관적인 예측을 하는지의 여부에 관계없이 재무분석가의 이익예측오차와 유의적인 관계를 갖지 않는 것으로 나타났다. 이는 재무분석가가 낙관적인 이익예측을 한 경우에 지배주주의 의결권이 높아질수록 재무분석가의 이익예측치가 높아진다는 의미이다. 이러한 본 연구의 발견은 규제기관이나 학계, 실무 종사자들과 투자자들에게 유용한 많은 시사점을 제공하고 있다.

영어초록

This study examines the effect of corporate governance measured by the ownership wedge (the difference between voting rights and cash flow rights) on the error and bias of the earnings forecasts issued by financial analysts. Korean corporate governance practice are characterized by the dominance of large business conglomerate, so called Chaebol. The conglomerates normally have pyramidal structure and cross-shareholdings which enable controlling shareholders to control the entire companies belonging to the conglomerate even with only a small percentage of direct ownership. As a result, compared with the percentage of ownership, cash flow rights (or the rights to receive dividends that the controlling shareholders have) are relatively low, therefore, the controlling shareholders can control far greater percentage of control rights (voting rights that the controlling shareholders have). This type of ownership wedge can significantly influence the firms’ and managers’ behavior.
As the ownership wedge increases, the chance that controlling shareholders expropriate minority shareholders increases. The controlling shareholders have less incentive to distribute the wealth of the firms to the minority shareholders because the controlling shareholders have less percentage of cash flow rights, but the controlling shareholders can transfer the wealth of the firms to themselves via hidden or intra-company transactions, in order to increase their personal wealth. It is possible because they have greater voting rights. The controlling shareholders also can try to build their personal empire or make entrenchment to pursue their personal wealth rather than to distribute the wealth to the minority shareholders. These kinds of behavior of the controlling shareholders can influence the characteristics of the earnings forecasts issued by financial analysts.
First, as the wedge increases, firms may manipulate earnings more frequently in order to increase the controlling shareholders’ personal wealth. Because analysts are not able to forecast how much firms manipulate earnings, it is possible that the difference between reported earnings by firms and analysts’ forecasts for the earnings (i.e., the error of analysts’ forecasts) increases as firms manipulate earnings more. As a result, the increased wedge can be related to the increased forecast errors.
Second, as the ownership wedge increases, the firms have more incentives to transfer wealth from minority shareholders to the controlling shareholders. Firms would like to hide such incentives and their activity from minority shareholders. As a result, firms are likely to disclose less amount of information to the market to avoid being detected by the minority shareholders. As less information available in the market, it is more difficult for financial analysts to predict future earnings using the available information. Thus, the analysts’ forecast error increases for those firms, resulting in the significant association between the ownership wedge and the forecast errors.
This paper investigates this prediction using empirical data from listed firms in Korean Stock Exchange. The ownership wedge data are publicly available from 2003 to year 2008, which are disclosed by Korean Fair Trade Commission. The financial and stock price data are retrieved from KIS-VALUE LIBRARY database and KCMI (Korea Capital Market Institute) database, respectively. Finally, analysts’ earnings forecast data are collected from DataGuidePro database provided by FnGuide. A total of maximum 547 firm-year observations are used in the empirical analyses.
The empirical findings are summarized as follows. First, consistent with expectation, the ownership wedge is positively associated with the errors in analysts’ earnings forecasts. Second, we separate the ownership wedge to cash flow rights and voting rights and re-perform the analyses. We find that the documented associations above are all driven by voting rights, not cash flow rights. As a result, as the percentage of the voting right increases, the errors in analysts’ forecasts increase. Third, we separate the analysts’ forecasts depending on the sign of the forecast error into optimistic or pessimistic forecasts. We find the significant association only for the samples with optimistically biased forecasts but fail to find any significant relationship for the samples with pessimistically biased forecasts. It implies that as voting rights increase, the likelihood that financial analysts issue optimistically biased earnings forecasts increases. It supports the argument that the uncertainty related to the firm performance for the firms with ownership wedge motivate analysts to issue more optimistic forecasts, which enable analysts to maintain close relationship with firms.
The findings in this study are interesting and provide several valuable implications to regulators, academics, practitioners, as well as individual investors and controlling shareholders. Regulators and firms need to improve corporate governance practice to prevent this type of problems. Regulators may need to pay more attention to the firms that have greater wedge in order to minimize any potential detrimental effects and find a way to tone down optimistic bias in the forecasts issued by those firms. Investors also need to be careful when they invest in the firms with greater wedge. Researchers need to study the effect of the wedge in more detail and try to develop ways to minimize the effect of the wedge. Practitioners, such as auditors, also need to be careful when they audit the financial statements of such firms and invest in firms.

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