Preface

Since the seminal JFE paper published by Jensen and Meckling in 1976(Jensen and Meckling,1976)the agency theory has been widely applied in numerous studies in the fields of corporate finance and accounting. Meanwhile,many researchers also notice that the conflicts between the principal(shareholder)and the agent (manager)may not be the predominant issue in most of the firms around the world,since the dispersed shareholding and separation between ownership and management are relatively uncommon phenomenon,limited to certain type offirms(listed firms)and to certain countries(like the USA).

In the continents like Asia or Europe,clearly identifiable large shareholders are very prevalent,even among listed companies.Some big corporate names are dominated by the state(like EDF,Finnair or PetroChina),or others are controlled by families(like Michelin,LVMH or Gome).Here,the interests of these large shareholders and their managers are often aligned but the conflicts between large shareholders and small ones are much present.This institutional setting extends our research frontiers and offers a very fertile ground for emerging research questions and conceiving new theories.

Therefore,we organized this themed symposium in Shanghai in March 2012 and succeeded to bring researchers from Asia,Europe and North America to explore different aspects of the large shareholder and its impacts on corporate governance and accounting.Carefully selected papers from the symposium are published in this special double issue after several rounds of revision following the symposium.

In the first part of the special issue,the leading paper is based on author's keynote address at the symposium.It focuses on the heterogeneity of large shareholders.The second paper brings in some perspectives from France.In particular,it examines the monitoring mechanism played by auditors in mitigating agency problems arising from different types of controlling shareholders.The third paper is focused on the Korean context where the predominance of large shareholders is prevalent among listed firms.It studies how the new Korean fair disclosure regulation affects the timeliness and informativeness of earnings announcements.The fourth paper looks into a major feature of Chinese capital market-the state-owned enterprises.It explores how the connections of the SOE chairmen impact on the firm's employment policies and the economic consequences of overstaffing.Enjoy your reading!

Reference

Jensen,M.C.,Meckling,W.H.,1976.Theory of the firm:managerial behavior,agency costs and ownership structure.Journal of Financial Economics 3(4),305-360.

Yuan Ding

China Europe International Business School,

Herve′Stolowy

HEC,Paris,France