South Indian Cultural Association or SICA is a non profit organization for carnatic music and dance. It is located in Hyderabad, India. The main function of the organisation is to organise cultural events mainly at Ravindra Bharathi.Renowned Classical music and dance artists perform for SICA during their festival in February and March.
This study delves into the relationship between ESG performance and dividend payout in G20 countries. Based on a comprehensive sample of 2344 firms from 2011 to 2022, our findings reveal a positive correlation between ESG performance and dividend payout. Notably, this positive impact is significantly pronounced in common-law countries, where investor protection is robust. Moreover, companies with high ESG performance are more adept at increasing dividends despite ESG controversies. These results remain robust even when considering endogeneity concerns, reduced sample size, or the use of alternative proxies for dividends and ESG. Our study's findings have practical implications, as they suggest that companies can enhance their dividend payout by improving their ESG performance, even in the face of controversies. This contributes to the existing literature by shedding light on the relationship between non-financial performance and a key corporate financial decision (dividends) in a cross-country context.
This study investigates the impact of mandatory Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) expenditure on credit ratings for 2759 firm-year observations from 2015 to 2023 in the Indian context. Our findings indicate that compliance with mandatory CSR spending significantly enhances credit ratings, particularly for firms with a history of voluntary CSR engagement. This suggests that rating agencies positively perceive consistent CSR activities, viewing them as indicators of enhanced transparency and reduced default risk, thus improving creditworthiness under the new regulatory environment. Our findings are validated using a Difference-in-Differences framework and an instrumental variable approach to address endogeneity concerns.
This study examines the impact of mandatory corporate social responsibility (CSR) regulation in India on firms’ leverage speed of adjustment (SOA). Leveraging a dataset of 8564 firm-year observations from 1789 unique firms, we find that compliance with the 2014 CSR mandate accelerates SOA. Results reveal that compliant firms achieve faster SOA, particularly those facing higher asymmetry and constraints, highlighting the economic significance of regulatory compliance. Employing causal identification techniques, including two-stage least squares and a difference-in-differences framework, we ensure robustness against endogeneity concerns. Finally, considering that achieving the target capital structure enhances firm value, we observe that the accelerated SOA resulting from compliance correlates with increased firm value.
Using a large sample of more than 2900 Indian firms from 2004 to 2023, our study reveals a non-linear association between promoter ownership and the speed of adjustment (SOA) in leverage. Specifically, we find that at lower levels of promoter ownership, the adjustment to leverage targets is swifter, whereas at higher levels of promoter ownership, the adjustment slows down. This non-linear relationship is particularly pronounced among underleveraged firms, which encounter greater costs of adjustment stemming from heightened information asymmetry and agency problems between promoters and outside shareholders. To substantiate our findings, we use a DiD estimation to exploit a quasi-natural experiment on the plausibly exogenous variations in promoter ownership mandated by the SEBI regulation. We further show that the slower SOA in firms with higher promoter ownership translates into lesser firm value. Our results are robust to a battery of alternative specifications, endogeneity issues, and using various proxies for information asymmetry.
This study examines the impact of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), 2016 on dividend policy using a panel of Indian firms from 2010 to 2019 sourced from the Prowess IQ database. We find a significant decline in both the intensity and propensity of dividend payments post-IBC, consistent with the notion that firms reduce payouts to retain internal funds and reduce reliance on debt. However, this negative effect is less pronounced for business group-affiliated firms, especially those linked to India's Top 50 diversified business groups, suggesting more efficient internal capital markets and higher dividend capacity. Sub-sample analysis reveals that unlevered firms do not exhibit changes in dividend policy post-IBC, while levered firms do, confirming internal financing as a key mechanism. Further, we document a post-IBC decline in firm leverage, supporting a deleveraging trend. Our results remain robust to alternate dividend definitions and instrumental variable regressions addressing endogeneity concerns using the GMM framework.
