The UNEBS R&RT Committee cordially invites you to attend to Professor Balasingham Balachandran’s Seminar. The session will be held on Friday 7th August in Lecture Theatre 5, W39 in EBL Building at 10:30AM.

Professor Balasingham Balachandran, La Trobe University

Seminar Title:  Powerful CEO and Stock Price Crash Risk

Abstract

This study provides strong evidence that CEO power imparts positive and significant effect on firm-specific future stock price crash risk. We show that powerful CEO leads to firm-specific crash risk by manoeuvring channels to hoard bad news, drawing market attention through taking excessive risk, and rendering governance mechanism ineffective. Our findings are consistent with the agency theory argument that a higher CEO power increases the potential for engaging in various opportunistic behaviour including rent extraction, bad new hoarding and short-termism. We also show that current corporate governance mechanism is not strong deterrent to reverse the impact of powerful CEO on stock price crash risk.

Professor Balasingham Balachandran is Professor of Finance at the Department of Economics and Finance, La Trobe Business School, La Trobe University. Professor Balachandran joined La Trobe University in February 2009. Prior to this he worked at Monash University, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand and University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka. He gained his Master degree in Accounting and Finance and PhD in Finance from University of Birmingham, UK.

Professor Balachandran has led many successful research grant applications. Most notably he secured funding of more than $400k in competitive ARC Discovery grants; and also more than 300k in various university/industry grants. Professor Balachandran has published his research findings in leading international journals, including: Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Journal of Corporate Finance, Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, European Financial Management, Accounting and Finance, Australian Journal of Management, Australian Tax Forum, European Journal of Finance, Multinational Finance Journal, International Review of Financial Analysis, Global Finance Journal, Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Australian Economic Papers, Advances in Financial Education, Applied Financial Economics, Monash Business Review and Finance Letters.

Professor Balachandran will be available for research meetings from Thursday 6^th August afternoon until Friday 7^th August afternoon. Those academics and HDR students interested to discuss with Professor Balachandran, please contact me at emilio.morales@une.edu.au

Please Note: a morning tea will be served in EBL café/meeting room before the seminar from 10:00AM. Please rsvp with Ms. Sophia Doran at sdoran4@une.edu.au by Monday 3^rd August.