海外來台第一上市櫃企業公司治理與股利政策之關聯

The Relationship between Corporate Governance and Dividend Policy: Evidence from Foreign Listing Firms in Taiwan

海外企業來台上市櫃係我國積極推動之政策，但此類企業通常股權架構及交易安排較複雜，投資人較難瞭解公司全貌，資訊透明度及股東權益的保障經常受到質疑。公司治理與股利政策皆是減輕代理問題之工具，然而兩者間的互補或替代關係在過去文獻發現相當分歧。本研究運用來台第一上市櫃企業資訊不對稱較嚴重之特性，配合證券暨期貨市場發展基金會發布之2016與2017年公司治理評鑑成績，探討來台上市櫃企業公司治理與股利政策之關聯，是否與我國一般企業有所差異。實證結果顯示來台第一上市櫃企業在公司治理較佳時，現金股利發放較少；亦即在資訊不對稱較嚴重的情境下，公司治理與股利發放具替代效果。此外，由於公司治理與股利發放之機制在代理問題嚴重時格外重要，本研究進一步檢測並驗證在自由現金流量較高時，來台上市櫃企業之公司治理與股利發放具有負向關聯。

The Taiwan government aggressively encourages foreign firms to be listed in Taiwan, but these firms' equity structure and sophisticated transaction arrangements are too complicated for the average investor to fully understand. Thus, the firm's information transparency and shareholders' rights protection are often questioned. The mechanisms of corporate governance and dividend policy are meant to mitigate agency problems, however, prior literature has found different evidence on the complementary or substitute roles between the two. Given that severe information asymmetry is a special characteristic of foreign firms listed in Taiwan, this study uses corporate governance ratings data published by the Securities & Futures Institute for years 2016-2017 to investigate whether the relationship between corporate governance and dividend policy is different from that of domestic firms listed in Taiwan. The results show that, for foreign firms listed in Taiwan, better corporate governance results in lower cash dividend payout, which means a substitution effect exists between corporate governance and dividend payout when information asymmetry is severe. In addition, considering that corporate governance and dividend payout are even more important for firms having severe agency problems, this study has further detected and verified that when free cash flow is high, corporate governance and dividend payout are negatively correlated for foreign firms listed in Taiwan.