The Financing and Governance of New Technologies

This paper examines the financial sector preconditions for the successful development of high technology sectors. It argues that there is a close relation between types of activities undertaken in different countries and their institutional structures. A distinguishing characteristic of the financing of new technology firms is their evolving pattern of control by different investor groups. While stock markets are an important component of the development of the most successful firms, they are not the most common. Regulation is a significant influence on institutional structure. For the most part, Europe has opted for high levels of investor protection and low levels of diversity, while the U.S. has placed more emphasis on entry and competition in the financial sector. While most attention to date has focused on the regulation and fragility of banking systems in Japan and the Far East, careful consideration needs to be given to alternative forms of regulating other parts of the financial system as well.high technology finance, corporate governance, financial systems, financial regulation

Mobile banking and financial inclusion : the regulatory lessons

Mobile banking is growing at a remarkable speed around the world. In the process it is creating considerable uncertainty about the appropriate regulatory response to this newly emerging service. This paper sets out a framework for considering the design of regulation of mobile banking. Since it lies at the interface between financial services and telecoms, mobile banking also raises competition policy and interoperability issues that are discussed in the paper. Finally, by unbundling payments services into its component parts, mobile banking provides important lessons for the design of financial regulation more generally in developed as well as developing economies.Banks&Banking Reform,Access to Finance,Emerging Markets,Debt Markets,Technology Industry

Creating incentives for private infrastructure companies to become more efficient

The privatization of infrastructure companies is expected to bring about gains for customers by increasing the efficiency of the privatized company. Because many infrastructure industries are not competitive, attention has focused on the development of regulatory regimes that replicate the operation of competitive markets and so lead to efficiency gains. Less attention, however, has been paid to other institutional factors that encourage firms to operate efficiently. The authors study three institutional factors that can, in general, encourage efficiency: the threat of bankruptcy; internal controls brought about by executive remuneration schemes and the ability of shareholders to remove underperforming management; and external disciplines brought about by the operation of the market for corporate control and the threat of hostile takeover. Applying these three aspects of corporate governance to monopolistic infrastructure firms is not simple. Infrastructure regulation may allow privatized firms to avoid financial problems by raising prices, for example, thus sheltering them from the threat of bankruptcy. And shareholder control may be hindered by restrictions on the proportion of the shares that can be owned by any one shareholder. The authors offer examples of the ways in which different regulatory, institutional, and governance systems work in different countries, especially in relation to infrastructure companies; and provide a checklist of options that should be considered when designing the involvement of the private sector in infrastructure position.Payment Systems&Infrastructure,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Microfinance,Small and Medium Size Enterprises,Small Scale Enterprise,Private Participation in Infrastructure,Small Scale Enterprise,Microfinance,Economic Theory&Research,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism

Mobile banking and financial inclusion: The regulatory lessons

Mobile banking is growing at a remarkable speed around the world. In the process it is creating considerable uncertainty about the appropriate regulatory response to this newly emerging service. This paper sets out a framework for considering the design of regulation of mobile banking. Since it lies at the interface between financial services and telecoms, mobile banking also raises competition policy and interoperability issues that are discussed in the paper. Finally, by unbundling payments services into its component parts, mobile banking provides important lessons for the design of financial regulation more generally in developed as well as developing economies. --Banking,Regulation,Microfinance,Payments System,Mobile Money

Sources of Funds and Investment Activities of Venture Capital Funds: Evidence from Germany, Israel, Japan and the UK

We compare sources of funds and investment activities of venture capital (VC) funds in Germany, Israel, Japan and the UK using a newly constructed data set. The data provide a rare opportunity to evaluate relations between funds' sources of finance and activities. We find that sources of VC funds differ significantly across countries, e.g. banks are particularly important in Germany, corporations in Israel, insurance companies in Japan, and pension funds in the UK. VC investment patterns also differ across countries in terms of the stage, sector of financed companies and geographical focus of investments. These differences in investment patterns are related to the variations in funding sources - for example, bank and pension fund backed VC's invest in later stage activities than individual and corporate backed funds. The relations differ across countries; for example, bank backed VC funds in Germany and Japan are as involved in early stage finance as other funds in these countries, whereas they tend to invest in relatively late stage finance in Israel and the UK. We consider the implication of this for the influence of financial systems on relations between finance and activities.

Governance as a source of managerial discipline

Anglo-American stock markets are much larger than their continental counterparts. Does investor protection and governance explain these differences? Using UK data, we examine four different forms of intervention which are suppose to promote good governance: takeovers, independent directors, outside shareholders, and providers of new finance. Which of these "four horses will win the race?". Institutional shareholders remain passive in the face of poor performance. Takeovers are effective in replacing management but are not focussed on poorly performing companies. Independent directors entrench poor performers and do not discipline management; they are advisors not monitors. The only effective mechanism for replacing management of poor performers and the providers of outside finance. When a poor performer needs outside finance, only then are outside shareholders willing to impose management changes. Is governance in Continental Europe more effective? The answer is not obviously so. Indeed in one important respect Germany looks worse. When there are major changes of ownership, the gains accruing to shareholders are much lower than in the UK or US. Moreover, those gains accrue to large German shareholders. Smaller shareholders hardly gain at all. One explanation is that restructuring German companies is more difficult and more costly than in the US or UK.

Capital Markets, Ownership and Distance

This paper uses a new data-set to examine how internal capital markets and foreign ownership affect investment. Our data allow us to compare investment behaviour of listed subsidiaries with stand-alone firms while controlling for investment opportunities of parent and subsidiary firms. We evaluate how the size of ownership and the geographical proximity of majority owners to their subsidiaries affect firm investment efficiency. We find that the investment of subsidiaries is more sensitive to investment opportunities than that of standalone firms and falls when investment opportunities of parent firms improve. This suggests that there are internal capital markets that reallocate funds towards units with better investment opportunities. We find that investment allocation is most efficient where parents have modest ownership stakes and are distant from their subsidiaries and when subsidiaries operate in well developed financial markets. These results indicate that influence costs imposed by dominant parents may outweigh their potential informational benefits, especially when subsidiaries are located in countries with weaker financial development.Investment, Internal Capital Markets, Foreign Ownership

Profit-sharing regulation: an economic appraisal

The stock market, take-over bidders, executive pay setters, perhaps Stephen Littlechild himself, even last summer’s weather, all seem to have been undermining RPI-X price-cap regulation. Until recently, price-cap regulation was regarded as demonstrably superior to US-style rate-of-return regulation, and regulatory reform in several countries has embraced price-cap regulation.2 But in Britain, where price- cap regulation originated, the case now appears to be less compelling: price-cap regulation is perceived by some as conferring unwarranted profits on the utilities and imposing unsustainable demands on regulators. As a consequence, many people believe that we are slipping inexorably into some form of profit regulation.