Saudi Cultural Missions Theses & Dissertations
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Item Restricted THE IMPACT OF ESG PERFORMANCE ON SYNDICATED LOAN TERMS: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS(Mashael Shamakhi, 2025) Zhao, Binru; Zhang, Hanxiong; Khoo, Shee Yee; Gepp, Adrian; Shamakhi, Mashael EssaThis research provides an integrated examination of four critical areas in modern finance: the impact of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) performance on syndicated loan terms, the influence of behavioural factors on investment decisions, the effectiveness of Credit Rating Agencies (CRAs) in assessing financial risk, and analytical models used to detect financial statement fraud. The ESG analysis shows no statistically significant effect on loan pricing, maturity, or covenant strictness, despite minor economic tendencies. The behavioural finance review highlights how social interactions, media sentiment, and AI-based tools amplify investor biases and market volatility. The evaluation of CRAs identifies persistent challenges related to rating accuracy, conflicts of interest, and delayed downgrades, even after post-crisis regulatory reforms. Finally, the fraud analytics component assesses models such as the Beneish M-Score, the Dechow F-Score, and machine learning methods like RUSBoost, demonstrating the limitations of traditional scoring models under extreme class imbalance. Collectively, the study underscores the interconnected roles of human behaviour, information quality, and quantitative analytics in shaping financial market outcomes and emphasizes the need for transparent methodologies, robust regulatory frameworks, and advanced analytical tools to enhance financial stability.13 0Item Restricted CEO Personal Attributes, Time Preference, and Corporate Decisions(2023-07-03) Alosaimi, Abdulmohsen; Fairchild, Richard; Hassanniakalager, ArmanThe thesis contains three empirical studies that have been applied to the Saudi stock market regarding behavioural finance and corporate governance. To address the personal attributes of chief executives (CEOs), we design three research questions to understand and discuss how CEO overconfidence and CEO horizon may affect the decisions of non-financial listed companies. The first empirical study (chapter 3) discusses that overconfident CEOs could have a significant effect on a firm's performance by influencing financial and investment decisions according to the empirical literature. This investigational study uses a cross-sectional design to test whether CEO overconfidence affects time preferences and establishes which orientation overconfident CEOs follow. Our findings confirm that overconfident CEOs are more future-orientated which means that overconfident CEOs have greater ability to focus on the future rather than the present. The results also indicate that overconfidence is positively related to risk which is consistent with the findings of numerous academic studies. Also, the association between age and risk is negative and statistically significant. Our findings are robust following the alternative measurement's testing for CEO overconfidence, time preference, and alternative estimation techniques and endogeneity tests. The second empirical study (chapter 4) investigates the effect of CEOs’ overconfidence and CEO long-horizon on corporate leverage decisions using balanced panel data for a sample of 119 non-financial firms on the Saudi Stock Exchange (TASI) during the period 2016-2020. The chosen model is the Pooled OLS model which is employed as an analytical technique. The findings confirm that overconfident CEOs are significantly and positively related to financial leverage which indicates that overconfident CEOs tend to take likely more debt in their capital structure of firms. This study also finds evidence that firms led by CEOs who have a longer horizon are more likely to have a higher level of debt. We also establish to examine the combined influence of CEO overconfidence and CEO long horizon on corporate leverage which are found to be significant and positive. The results are robust to various tests and alternative explanations. The final empirical study (chapter 5) focuses on horizon problems that pronouncedly arise when CEOs are close to departing their position for retirement where they are more likely to focus on the short-term in order to protect their successful legacy. Overconfidence involves overestimating their skills, knowledge, abilities and likelihood of success by inflating their projected future earnings and investment returns. This paper examines the influence of CEO horizon and CEO overconfidence on the dividend policy of firms using a sample of the 119 largest Saudi listed companies during the period 2016-2020 with the expectation that CEOs approaching retirement may lead firms to pay a dividend. The findings are that short horizon CEOs positively affect the dividend policy which is consistent with our prediction. In turn, CEO overconfidence is insignificantly related to dividend policy. Our findings remain robust after testing the alternative measurement of dividend policy, alternative estimation methods, alternative measurement of CEO horizon, and following making endogeneity checks.23 0Item Restricted A comprehensive analysis of calendar anomalies in mature and emerging markets(2022-07-15) Althenayan, Faris; Kolev, Gueorgui; Bace, EdwardThe research begins with a comprehensive study on 4 major calendar anomalies at industry level in the US market for 90 years which include a break point period in 1952. Daily returns are examined for the weekday, turn-of-the-month, January and Halloween effects and the results confirm that the effects of these anomalies exist and persist uniformly across almost all industries in both periods before and after the break point. Hence, calendar effects are driven by economic events affecting all industries rather than by industry-specific factors. The thesis starts with the US market given the maturity of the market and the extended data available which will provide an overall understanding of the topic of calendar anomalies. To delve deeper into the topic of calendar anomalies the research attempt to investigate the famous weekday effect in an emerging market, Saudi Arabia. This will give a deeper understanding of the topic since investors attributed to this market have many behavioural aspects that could affect the anomaly like cultural and religious beliefs. The research studies the existence of the anomaly in 15 industries in the Saudi stock market by applying a break point in June 2013 where there was a change in the weekend days. The findings confirm the existence of the anomaly pre-June 2013 only, providing evidence that the break point event of changing the weekend days directly affected the anomaly. From this standpoint, the research continue to explore the pre-holiday effect in Saudi Arabia to further investigate the effect of culture and religion on calendar anomalies. The study examines the anomaly in both market and industry level to confirm whether the effect is limited to certain sectors or is a wide-market phenomenon affecting all industries similarly. The data covers daily returns for both the general market and 15 industries over a period of almost 11 years, from 2009 to 2020. The findings confirm the existence of the pre-holiday effect at the general market and industry level for religious holidays, however, there is no evidence found on the existence of the anomaly on non-religious holidays.6 0