董事會連結與股票購回宣告之策略性模仿

企業為何會透過股票購回宣告以進行股利的分配? 過去已有需多文獻提出探討，如為維護股價的股價低估假說；可提高惡意併購企業之購併成本；可支應企業發行可轉換債券、認股權證、員工股票選擇權履行之需求，以避免因發行新股造成股權與盈餘稀釋的困境等。然而，企業股票購回決策是否會因董事會的社會連結關係，而獲得其他企業更多關注，進而使其模仿連結企業的股票購回宣告決策呢。本文以臺灣上市上櫃企業為研究樣本，藉由企業高階管理層的外部獨立董事連結關係作為觀察，並驗證是否具有股票購回宣告策略性模仿行為。實證結果呈現，企業管理者會模仿進行高程度股票購回宣告之董事會連結企業的決策。本文亦發現股票購回宣告並不會因為董事任期、連結企業的規模、績效或是否屬相同產業，而使得模仿的機率提高或程度更大，即並未存在選擇性的模仿，且此董事會連結所產生的模仿效果，對次年研究企業決策的影響也逐漸消失。此外，本文結果也指出企業會因前一年同業股票購回宣告後股價績效愈佳，而有愈高的機率進行股票購回宣告，支持同儕學習效果。

關鍵字

股票購回；董事會連結；策略性模仿效果；同儕學習效果

並列摘要

Why do managers distribute dividend through share repurchases announcement? Prior researchers have recommended many possibilities. For example, underpricing hypothesis, anti-merger and acquisition, avoid EPS dilution and so on. However, whether or not a firm’s share repurchases announcement depend on their tied-to firm, such as top executives’ outside directorships social tie, and if so, how it is being imitated, is essential to the interpretation of share repurchases announcement. Using the firms listing in TSE and OTC market, this study tries to empirically test and answer whether CEO outside directorships social ties have more influence on share repurchases decision than others. The results indicate that CEOs imitate the share repurchases intensity of tied-to firms (i.e., a firm in which the CEO serves as an outside board member) in their own firm’s share repurchases decisions. Inconsistent with attention-based arguments, the results show no evidence of selective imitation, the probability and intensive of share repurchases is not more strong with when the CEO has longer tenure as a director of a tied-to firm and the tied-to firm is performing well and they are in the same industry. Further, the outside directorships tie imitation effect has disappeared in next year. Finally, consistent with peer learning effect, our findings also show that the higher probability of CEOs imitate peer firms when peer firms make share repurchases decisions and have higher CARs in prior year.