기업의 자발적 공시와 대주주의 주식담보대출

초록

This study investigates whether and how major shareholders’ share pledging affects firms’ voluntary disclosure behavior. While share pledging, a shareholder’s pledging of stock as collateral for personal bank loans, is an emerging phenomenon worldwide, its economic implications are underexplored in the literature. To fill this void, this study exploits a unique Korean institutional setting where major shareholders’ share pledging is mandatorily disclosed. Using a sample of Korean firms listed in the KOSPI and KOSDAQ exchanges during 2013-2019, we find that pledging firms are less likely than non-pledging firms to provide voluntary disclosure. This tendency is observed only for the disclosure of quantitative rather than qualitative information, and is also more pronounced for the disclosure of bad news than that of good news. These results are consistent with a view that the share pledging of major shareholders can exacerbate agency conflicts between major and minor shareholders. In line with this view, our additional analyses reveal that the negative relation between share pledging and disclosure frequency is more pronounced for firms that are subject to greater intra-shareholder agency conflicts. Collectively, the findings suggest that major shareholders with share pledging induce firms to selectively disclose information to the market, in a manner that serves their private benefits.

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