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This research examined whether the beta anomaly exists in the REIT market. By analysing a low-minus-high beta strategy and a betting-against-beta strategy in the REIT market, we find that high-beta REITs earn significantly lower risk-adjusted returns than low-beta REITs. This beta anomaly is only significant in the New REIT Era after 1993. The negative relationship between beta and REIT stock return does not disappear after taking into account some firm characteristics, suggesting that the beta anomaly in the REIT market is not driven by beta’s correlation with profitability, asset growth, lottery-like return or the skewness of stock returns. We find that institutional investors, whose portfolios increasingly contain a significant proportion of REITs, prefer the high-beta REITs. The exposure of institutional investors to high-beta REITs could explain the beta anomaly in the REIT market.

This research examines whether real estate professionals detected the property bubble and foresaw the consequent financial crisis of 2007-2008. By analysing the insider trading activities within REITs from 1996 to 2010, we find that REIT insiders reduced their holdings significantly during the real estate boom period as early as 2004, before the financial crisis. Difference-in-difference analysis reveals that REIT insiders cashed out their positions more aggressively than insiders in real estate and construction firms. The findings support the informed trader hypothesis that managers and employees in REITs anticipated the burst of the real estate bubble and the imminent financial crisis, and shifted their wealth away from the real estate market to avoid potential losses. We find no evidence to support the biased belief hypothesis (Cheng et al., 2014) that REIT insiders were over-optimistic during the real estate boom period or that their inside trading behaviour was affected by local market performance.

This paper explores the relationship between distress risk and stock return on equity REITs from 1982 to 2017. The distress risk measures such as expected default frequency and failure probability can effectively predict financial failures in the REITs. The distressed REITs earn lower returns than the safe REITs, and the underperformance becomes even worse after correcting the value and size risks. The findings indicate that the distress risk is not a systematic risk or rewarded with a risk premium in the REIT market. The distress anomaly from long the safest REITs and short the most distressed REITs can be explained by the institutional investments in the REITs and the investors’ risk aversion.

On June 6, 2018, China has adopted a new policy that allows overseas-listed Chinese companies to launch secondary listings (hereafter, returned-global Chinese IPOs) in the domestic market. This study examines how the returned-global Chinese IPOs affect financial reporting quality, information environments, and IPO pricing in the domestic market. We find that these newly public companies in China exhibit lower discretionary accruals (and their components), lower stock price synchronicity, and lower first-day underpricing upon IPOs. Our difference-in-differences tests reveal that IFRS convergence in China mitigates overseas listing advantage of the returned-global firms. Overall, this study highlights the economic benefits of overseas listing of the returned-global Chinese IPOs and the impact of the change in financial accounting standards on the IPO market. Our evidence highlights the bright side of the recent regulatory change in China.

Using a comprehensive U.S. rating sample from S&P between 1981 and 2015, we examine the information content, responsiveness to credit risk and recovery efforts associated with rating outlooks. We find that rating outlooks (and credit watches) have important information content and are significantly associated with creditworthiness, measured by expected default frequency. More importantly, we show that by assigning negative outlooks, credit rating agencies induce some issuers to exert recovery efforts to prevent subsequent downgrades. The findings support the theoretical prediction of Boot et al. (Rev Financ Stud 19(1):81–118, 2006) that credit rating actions serve as a coordination mechanism between rating agencies and issuers.

This paper analyses firms’ bidding behavior in auctions for development land in Hong Kong. The real estate market in Hong Kong is considered to be oligopolistic as it is dominated by a few top real estate firms, which have strong financial strength/development capacity and large land banks. Joint bidding is used by other real estate firms (“large” firms) to pool resources/capital in order to compete with the top firms. We test whether joint bidding increases or decreases the level of competition in land auctions, using land auction data in Hong Kong from 1991 to 2011. We find that large real estate firms are more likely to be successful than top firms at auctions when bidding jointly. However, joint bidding/winning does not harm competition as reflected by the number of bids, bids per bidder and number of bidders. Land prices also increase significantly in auctions won by joint bidders or alliances of large developers. Our results suggest that joint bidding enhances competition by allowing large firms to act strategically by pooling their resources and act aggressively to compete with the top firms.

This paper tests for the effects of financial constraints on open-bid English land auction prices and bids. It is argued that bidders’ ability to pay, taken as capital resources and/or capital budget constraints, influence bids and final auction prices. While high capital resource developers may elect to bid more than optimal to win auctions, or bidders may elect to pool resources in joint bidding, budget constraints imposed by firm-specific financial variables on the other hand are expected to restrict bids. Land auction data in Hong Kong are used to test systematically these predictions. It is found that a firm’s age, the number of winners in a joint bid, and firm status in the market are positively related to prices, all factors which may be attributed to a firm’s ability to finance the auction price. Firm size, internal funds, financing cost, debt capacity and existing capital expenditure are also shown to affect bids submitted in land auctions: firm size and internal funds are positively related to bid prices; while constrained debt capacity, financing cost and existing capital expenditure lower bids. The results are consistent with predictions that a firm’s financial constraints, and thus its effect on capital budgets, are relevant factors in predicting land auction outcomes. More generally, these findings confirm that similar financial factors that constrain corporate capital investment also influence directly acquisition of assets at auctions.

The crude methanol extract (ME) from camellia oil was fractionated by serial benzene, ether, EtOAc and n-BuOH, divided into five subfractions designated as SF1–5. The obtained fractions as well as ME were evaluated for their antioxidant activities using DPPH assay, and their phenolic constituents were isolated using silica gel column chromatography and analysed by TLC, RP-HPLC–PDA, UPLC-ESI–MS and GC–MS. Results showed that the content of total phenolics (TPs) of ME, determined by the Folin–Ciocalteu method, was estimated to be 79.5 ± 10.2 mg of p-hydroxybenzoic acid equivalent/kg oil, while that of the total flavonoids was 8.98 ± 0.54 mg of rutin equivalent/kg oil. ME exhibited pronounced radical-scavenging activity against the stable DPPH radical (with an antioxidant capacity IC50 value of 52.37 μg/mL), and three subfractions (SF1–3) separated from ME contributed the most significant activity with IC50 of 28.41, 17.42 and 43.17 μg/mL, respectively. Consistent with the different capacity of scavenging DPPH radicals, the subfractions from ME showed different composition and contents of phenolic compounds as detected by TLC, RP-HPLC–PDA, UPLC-ESI–MS and GC–MS. Kaempferol, as well as a number of volatile phenolic compounds, was first identified from camellia oil. Results showed that the presence of phenolic compounds and flavonoids in each extracts may be responsible for its individual antioxidant activity, and the lipophilic phenolic fractions would likely account for a great part of the antioxidant properties of the oil.