PhD Defence Sereeparp Anantavrasilp
In his dissertation 'Essays on Ownership Structures, Corporate Finance Policies and Financial Reporting Decisions’, Sereeparp Anantavrasilp covers empirical analyses in the fields of corporate governance, corporate finance and accounting conservatism – as well as the relationships between them. The impact of the global financial crisis is also a key theme that runs through each of the three studies. Sereeparp Anantavrasilp has defended his dissertation on Friday, 29 January 2021 at 09:30h. His supervisors were Prof. Abe de Jong (RSM) and Prof. Peter Roosenboom (RSM). Other members of the Doctoral Committee were Prof. Gerard Mertens (Open University), Prof. Erik Peek (RSM), Prof. Ulrich Hege (Toulouse School of Economics).
About Sereeparp Anantavrasilp
Sereeparp Anantavrasilp was born on 22 January 1983 in Bangkok, Thailand. In 1998, he received an ASEAN Secondary Scholarship, granted by the Singaporean Ministry of Education, to study at Anglo-Chinese School (Independent), where he completed his GCSE ‘O’ Level Examination. He went on to study Finance at the University of Notre Dame (Indiana, the United States) and obtained a Bachelor in Business Administration (Magna Cum Laude) in 2005. After a brief career in investment banking in Thailand, Sereeparp continued his education in the Netherlands after being awarded a Graduate Scholarship by the Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM). He graduated from the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, with an ERIM Master of Philosophy in Business Research – Finance (Cum Laude) in 2007. During his Master study, he worked as a research assistant for Prof. Abe de Jong on the International Corporate Governance Research Project.
He then pursued a career in corporate finance in the Netherlands, first at the Group Finance Bank of the ING Group and later on in the Valuation & Business Modelling team at EY Transaction Advisory Services (currently known as EY Strategy & Transactions). He still held a strong passion for research, however, so he rejoined the research project team and started working on his PhD studies on an external basis under the supervision of Prof. Abe de Jong and Prof. Peter Rosenboom in 2009 alongside his full-time position at EY. His research interests include corporate finance, corporate governance as well as accounting. The article version of the second chapter of his dissertation, “Blockholder leverage and payout policies: Evidence from French Holding Companies”, has been published in the Journal of Business Finance & Accounting.
Professionally, Sereeparp is currently an Associate Partner at the EY S&T practice in Amsterdam, where he specializes in providing corporate finance and transactions advice to multinational clients across industries. He has also been a CFA charterholder since 2011.
Thesis Abstract
This dissertation covers empirical analyses in the fields of corporate governance, corporate finance and accounting conservatism – as well as the relationships between them. The impact of the global financial crisis is also a key theme that runs through each of the three studies.
Chapter 2 examines the use of leverage in concentrated ownership structures and its effects on payout policy. Based on French data, we find that companies exposed to blockholder leverage are reluctant to cut dividends in difficult times. Furthermore, we observe that, within pyramids, on average only 60% of dividends are passed through to the ultimate owners, with the rest predominantly used to meet debt service obligations of the pyramidal entities.
The latter two essays concern the demand for accounting conservatism and the impact of capital structure decisions on firm reporting behaviors. In Chapter 3, we investigate US firms that attracted new funds from capital markets and find support for the demand for conservative reporting by shareholders in the public markets. The analysis provides no significant results for debt issues or private equity deals.
In Chapter 4, using an extensive international dataset, I find variations in the reporting quality of corporates around the world. The results also indicate that conservatism is associated not only with the legal origin of the counties but also their institutional factors.
