Based on multiple case studies of the transactions in China by private equity funds, this paper attempts to explore the value-creation capabilities of private equity funds at the transaction/deal level.

Previous studies on financial performance of PE funds utilized data collected from publically traded companies in European/US markets. By measuring financial performance of both “pre- and post-transactions,” these studies researched two questions: 1) Do buyout funds create value? 2) If they do, what are the sources of value creation? In general, studies conclude that private equity/buyout funds do create value at both the deal level and investor level. They also identified four possible sources of such value creation: 1) undervaluation, 2) leverage effect, 3) better governance, and 4) operational improvement.

However, relatively little is known about the process of value creation. In this study, I attempt to fill that gap, revealing the “secret recipe” of value creation.

By carefully looking into the process of value creation, this study suggests five propositions covering capabilities at 1) deal selection/screening, 2) deal structuring, 3) operational improvement, 4) investment exit, and 5) Top Management Team (TMT). These capabilities at private equity/buyout funds are critical factors for value creation. In a thorough review of the value-creation process, this paper hopes to:

1) Share real-life experiences and lessons learned on private equity transactions in China as a developing economy.

2) Reveal the process of deal/transaction to observe measures taken place within deal/transaction for value creation.

3) Show how well-executed strategies and capabilities in deal selection/screening, deal structuring, operational improvement, and investment exit can still create value for private equity firms without financial leverage.

4) Share the experience of State-Owned Enterprises (SOE) reform participated in by private equity firms in China. This could provide valuable information for policy makers in China.

In the last two years, China’s booming of Internet Finance Platform made significant impacts on three dimensions. Compared with the conventional market, Internet Finance is asserted to open a revolutionary pathway of lending where by small and mid-sized companies may overcome the financing dilemma on credit accessibility and high cost. In other words, Internet Finance is hyped to be able to reduce information asymmetry, enhance allocation efficiency of resources, and promote product and process innovations for the financial institutions. However, the core essence of Internet Finance rests on risk assessment and control – a fundamental element applies to all forms of financing. Most current practice of internet finance on risk assessment and control remains unchanged from the mindset of traditional banking practices for small and medium sized firms. Hence, the same problems persisted and may only become even worse under the internet finance platform if no innovations take place.

In this thesis, the author proposed and tested a credit risk assessment model using data analytics techniques through an in-depth cases study with actual transaction data. Specifically, based on the 30,000 observations collected from actual transactional data from small and medium size firms of China’s home furnishing industry. The preliminary results are promising in spite of the limitations. The thesis concludes with the findings of relevance to improve the current practices and suggests areas of future research.

With the rapid rise of distributed generation, Internet of Things, and mobile Internet, both U.S. and European smart home manufacturers have developed energy management solutions for individual usage. These applications help people manage their energy consumption more efficiently. Domestic manufacturers have also launched similar products.

This paper focuses on the factors influencing Energy Management Behaviour (EMB) at the individual level. By reviewing academic literature, conducting surveys in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, the author builds an integrated behavioural energy management model of the Chinese energy consumers. This paper takes the vague term of EMB and redefines it as a function of two separate behavioural concepts: Energy Management Intention (EMI), and the traditional Energy Saving Intention (ESI).

Secondly, the author conducts statistical analyses on these two behavioural concepts. EMI is the main driver behind an individual’s EMB. EMI is affected by Behavioural Attitudes, Subjective Norms, and Perceived Behavioural Control (PBC). Among these three key factors, PBC exerts the strongest influence. This implies that the promotion of the energy management concept is mainly driven by good application user experience (UX). The traditional ESI also demonstrates positive influence on EMB, but its impact is weaker than the impacts arising under EMI’s three factors. In other words, the government and manufacturers may not be able to change an individual's energy management behaviour if they rely solely on their traditional promotion strategies. In addition, the study finds that the government may achieve better promotional results by launching subsidies to the manufacturers of these kinds of applications and smart appliances.

Executive compensation design involving equity shares has been widely used in Europe, the United States and other developed countries where the capital markets are relatively mature. In China, due to the differences in industries, ownership structure, stages of enterprise development, constraints faced by the firms, the executive compensation design using equity shares tends to vary accordingly. For the state-owned companies, the situations are more complex than others. This complexity has not been a focus of the past literature, particularly on the compensation contract design and its subsequent implementation. Based on Coase contract theorem, agency theory and human capital theory, I examined how different state-owned firms vary in their approaches on managerial stock compensation design using a case study approach. The thesis concludes with a summary of major findings and a discussion of policy implications.

This study seeks to develop a framework that can help firms in China’s guarantee industry to better identify and prevent risk when they offer guarantee services to small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). With the continuously increasing demands of SME financing, the guarantee industry has developed rapidly in China. Meanwhile, the turmoil in global financial markets and the significant slowdown of global economy have started to have a negative impact on China’s economy, increasing the risk exposure of China’s guarantee industry. In this context, risk identification and prevention becomes the core competence of a guarantee company. Based on a review of the existing research, two in-depth case studies, and the author’s personal experiences in this industry, this paper does not only provide a comprehensive list of the risks that guarantee firms face in China but also measures for risk identification and prevention.

This thesis is organized as follows. First, I provide a brief description about the emergence and development of China’s guarantee industry, as well as its current status. Next, I explain what kinds of risks faced by guarantee firms in China that influence their performance and survival, and summarize the various external and internal risk factors. I also conduct one in-depth case analysis to illustrate how a guarantee firm can better identify the risks it is exposed to. Next, on the basis of another in-depth case analysis, I develop a framework that can help guarantee firms to systematically develop effective measures of risk identification and prevention. I conclude with a discussion of this study’s implications for guarantee firms and the regulatory governmental agencies in China.

With the fast development of Chinese capital market, an increasing number of institutions and retail investors invest through professional managers. The key to evaluating investment manager’s skill and performance persistence largely lies in portfolio style research and attribution analysis.

The current dissertation takes advantage of a unique dataset, uncover hidden investment style and trading behavior, understanding their source of excess returns, and establishing a more comprehensive methodology for evaluating portfolio performance and manager skills.

The dissertation focuses on quantitative analysis. Highlights three most important aspects. Investment style determines the systematic returns and risks of any portfolio, and can be assessed ex-ante; Transaction can be observed and modified during the investment process; and return attribution can be implemented to evaluate portfolio (managers), ex-post. Hence, these three elements make up a comprehensive and logical investment process.

Investment style is probably the most important factor in determining portfolio returns. However, Chinese investment managers are under constant pressure to follow the market trend and shift style accordingly. Therefore, accurately identifying and predicting each manager’s investment style proves critically valuable.

In addition, transaction data probably provides the most reliable source of information in observing and evaluating an investment manager’s style and strategy, in the middle of the investment process.

Despite the efficacy of traditional return attribution methodology, there are clear limitations. The current study proposes a novel return attribution methodology, by synthesizing major portfolio strategy components, such as risk exposure adjustment, sector rotation, stock selection, altogether. Our novel methodology reveals that investment managers do not obtain much abnormal returns through risk exposure adjustment or sector rotation. Instead, Chinese investment managers seem to enjoy most of their excess returns through stock selection.

In addition, we find several interesting patterns in Chinese A-share market: 1). There is a negative relationship between asset under management (AUM) and investment performance, beyond certain AUM threshold; 2). There are limited benefits from style switching in the long run; 3). Many investment managers use CSI 300 component stocks as portfolio ballast and speculate with CSI500 and Medium-and-Small board component stocks for excess returns; 4). There is no systematic negative relationship between portfolio turnover and investment performance; despite negative relationship within certain sub-samples and sectors; 5). It is plausible to construct out-performing portfolios with style index funds and ETFs.

Ever since the registration of private banks was deregulated in Taiwan in 1991, the sector has suffered significant decline in profitability. Facing such a dynamic sector yet vital to domestic economy, what should the banks do to successfully improve their competiveness? As external changes are often unpredictable, the exploration and buildup of internal resources is a critical approach. This article focuses on how to effectively manage internal competition so as to upgrade business performance and accomplish organizational goals.

This article discusses the effects of the compensation system and employee incentives on business performance in banking in two areas. First of all, based on the statistics on the banking sector in Taiwan, it explores the regulating effects of different compensation systems on two conflicts in the industry. It also reviews the literature on Conflict Theory. Research shows that when people trust each other, they tend to accept a value statement different from theirs. And our research also shows that trust can minimize task conflict and relationship conflict between team members. Moreover, after identifying the role of compensation structure to trust and task conflict, this article further categorizes the structure into team performance reward and individual performance reward. Analysis points out that when the organization bases compensation payment on team performance reward, the relationship between trust and task conflict is higher than that on individual performance reward. That is, team performance reward better helps to reinforce such correlation compared to individual performance reward.

Second, the research studies different forms of employee incentives in Taiwan’s banking sector as well as resulting performance. During the studied period, the majority of the financial institutions preferred cash bonus. In addition, financial institutions also take other incentives. Cash bonus covered the highest percentage, followed by share bonus, treasury repo and transfer, and options in order. We study the ROEs under different incentives and conclude it is higher and more stable in the institutions offering multiple employee shares instead of single method. Whether the incentives are implemented also influence the level of net ROE.

During the past decade, the Chinese bond market has been rapidly developing. The percentage of bond to total social funding is constantly increasing. The structure and behavior of investors are crucial to the construction of China’s bond market. Due to specific credit risks, bond market regulation usually involves in rules to control investor adequancy. It is heatedly discussed among academia and regulators about whether individual investors are adequate to directly participate in bond trading. This paper focuses on the comparison between individual and institutional bond investors, especially their returns and risks. Based on the comparison, this paper provides constructive suggestions for China’s bond market development and the bond market investor structure.

Given the "New Nine Measures" for capital market reform, a policy document issued by the State Council of China, the development of markets for interest rate derivatives, such as treasury futures, becomes an increasingly important task. Several shortcomings of the existing treasury futures market have been noted: including low market liquidity, singular investor composition, restrict contract terms, and low hedging demand.

This study contributes to a better understanding of the treasury futures market by analyzing changes in China treasury futures market regulations and their impact on market liquidity of treasury futures. Found that compared with the mature market, China treasury futures market exists liquidity shortage, the trading system, market structure and the division of regulatory are factors which influence the liquidity of China treasury futures market.

This study found that reducing transaction costs for further optimization of the width and depth of China treasury futures market are not obvious by using quantitative analysis method, expanding the smallest change price can optimize the market depth, reducing transaction costs and expanding smallest change price can optimize the immediacy, volume and hosting amount. In addition, the bond market will also influence the treasury futures market, the price fluctuations and the morphology of the yield curve of bond market have significant influence on width, depth and holdings of market.

The system of China treasury futures market needs to be optimized by expanding the smallest change price and reducing transaction costs. The market structure needs to be optimized by establishing unified bond market and enriching investor structure.

These findings have significant theoretical and practical implications. The study also provides policy recommendations for the design and establishment of treasury futures market to the regulatory agencies.

The traditional newspaper industry has been under tremendous pressure in recent years due to the emergence and growth of new media. Experiencing of a fast-shrinking market share, many traditional newspaper companies are either pushed out of business or are forced to innovate and reform. In this thesis, I investigate the organizational changes at one of the largest newspaper groups in China, particularly regarding its incentive systems as the group adjusts its business scopes under both internal and external institutional constraints.

Publishers of newspapers were traditionally considered non-profit organizations or social institutions in China. Because of their focus on social goals, their activities were not market driven, including the incentive systems for editorial staff members who were central to the content of the newspapers. As the competition from market-driven new media companies increased, many traditional newspaper organizations started to transform themselves into profit-seeking companies. To survive and grow stronger in the new environment, the traditional newspaper industry needs to effectively motivate its workforce by implementing an effective incentive system for the editorial staff.

In this study I first explain the difficulities the traditional newspaper organizations face to implement an incentive system that both satisfies media’s social responsibility and creates sufficient incentive for for editorial staff. Next, I provides a brief history of the reforms occurred in the Chinese newspaper industry in general and the reforms in Shanghai in particular. I then conduct in-depth case analyses of the incentive systems adopted by four successful companies, including one U.S. media company, two Chinese media groups, and one private non-media company in China. Based on the findings from these case analyses and a demographic analysis of the challenges in motivating editorial staff, a new incentive system is designed and implemented in a major newspaper/media group in Shanghai, followed by a survey of its effects on the editorial staff months later. According to the survey, I find that editorial staff members are generally positive about the reforms that have been carried out at this media group, reinforcing the confidence of the group’s leaders in continuing to push the reforms forward. This study concludes by proposing a framework that can be used to guide the transformation of the traditional newspaper organizations to market-driven new media companies.