earticle

영어

This study test policy effects of korean chaebols’ transformations into holding companies. A holding company is defined as a firm which hold enough shares in one or more other companies to be able to control the other companies. The regulation authorities on holding companies in korea, Korean Fair Trade Commission(KFTC) defines the requirements to be holding company in its Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act. A holding company defined by KFTC are required to meet the conditions which its asset is more than 100 billion korean won, and its holding ratio exceeds 50%. KFTC also allows to introduce a holding company since the year of 1999, motivated by the Asian Economic Crisis in 1997. In those times of the economic crisis, a bunch of chaebol firms had been suffered the consecutive being bankrupt derived by their pyramidal ownership structure. Korean government contrives to solve out the solutions in reforming the chaebols' concentrated governance structures driven by family-owned controlling shares. Those times, OECD also strongly recommends to adopt a holding companies system in korea to promote market transparency and restructuring of firms. For a long time, korean chaebols are under severe blames for their economic concentrations through their pyramidal ownership structures. A series of remedies or policies to transform chaebols' governance into holding companies are placed as one of the most important regulations to decentralize chaebols' economic powers. KFTC announces the policy goals of introducing a new governance structure, the holding companies as follows. First, holding company governance provides more simple and transparent governance structures. Second, the parent companies of any holding companies conglomerate group play their headquarter roles, thus become easier to clarify where the responsibility lies on most legal issues related to conglomerate group. Third, the independent governance structures of holding companies enable to restructure efficiently, through the channels of spin-offs or mergers. It is well known that the stock prices of group-affiliated firms are interdependently influenced by the information transition effects. This study explores how the change in cash flow rights after the transition of group-affiliated firms into holding companies influences the interdependent stock prices of such individual firms. The censoring period for this study rages from 1999 to 2013, and it focuses on only Korean Chaebol groups which became holding companies during the observation period. The resulting sample data consists of 1,072 affiliated firm by year cases. The results showed that the information transition effect on the individual stock prices among the group-affiliated individual firms was much stronger after than before the transition into holding companies. The results suggest that the increase in the interdependence on member firms’ stock prices might be caused because the required minimum amount in stock holding ratio largely increased among the group-affiliated member firms. A further analysis also shows that the information transition effect was not observed among the non-group affiliated firms. This study provided another interesting finding that the intensity of information transition effect after the transition into holding companies was relatively weak in Chaebol groups. This might result from the strict monitoring systems that the Korean Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) has implemented to enhance independence of management for the Chaebol group-related affiliated firms. With respect to practical implication, the results suggest that the transition into holding companies may strengthen the interdependence on the stock prices of the group-affiliated firms which in turn result in the failure in enhancing independence of management. Therefore, the introduction of new institutions may be needed to improve the separation of ownership and management of the group-affiliated individual firms, given that the importance of institutions or regulations for holding companies increases in the stock market over time.

한국어

기업 집단 소속 계열사들 간에는 주가 상호 간에 영향을 미치는 정보전이효과가 존재한다. 본 연구는 지주회사 전환에 따른 소유지분관계의 변화가 소속 계열사들의 주가 의존성에 미치는 영향을 검증하였다. 실증 결과는 지주회사 전환 시 소속 계열사 간 정보전이효과가 이전보다 강화되는 것을 보여주었다. 이러한 결과는 지주회사 소속 기업 간 최저 보유지분이 큰 폭으로 상승하여 성과의 의존성이 높아진 결과로 볼 수 있다. 추가 분석으로서 지주회사 미편입 기업들을 별도로 분석한 결과에서는 전환 전후에 정보전이효과의 차이를 발견하지 못하였다. 또한 지주회사 중 재벌 소속 기업의 경우는 정보전이효과의 강화 정도가 상대적으로 작았는데, 이는 재벌계 지주회사에 대한 감독당국의 감시가 강화되면서 독립경영을 촉진한 결과로 해석된다. 연구 결과는 실무적으로 지주회사 전환으로 기업 집단 소속 계열사의 주식 가격의 상호의존성이 강화되면서 정책 목표인 독립경영 제고에 실패하였다는 정책적 시사점을 제시하고 있다. 지주회사 제도는 향후 국내 기업 집단 정책의 주요한 대안이 되는 것을 고려할 때, 주식시장에서 계열사들의 독립경영을 약화시키는 부분은 제도 변화 등을 통한 개선 요구가 있음을 제안한다.