The purpose of the study is to find the factors that influence the financial leverage of Vietnam firms. The dependent variable is the financial leverage and the independent variables are firm size, asset structure, liquidity, growth opportunities, profitability, and firm age. The data are collected from Vietnam firms’ annual financial reports in the period from 2010 to 2019. The study uses a sample of 448 Vietnam listed firms in the period. We also employ a panel regression model with pooled OLS and fixed effect to analyze the firms’ financial data. The results of the model showed that financial leverage (FL) has a negative relationship with some factors such as asset structure (AS), liquidity (LQ), growth opportunities (GRW), profitability (ROA), and firm age (AGE) in the fixed effect regression. It means that when liquidity, profitability, and firm age increase, firms’ financial leverage will decrease. While firms’ financial leverage has still a positive relationship with the firm size (SIZE) in the model. As a result, when firm size increases, financial leverage will increase, too. The results showed that models are fit for the research and can be used to predict future findings. It is also useful for enterprises, financial advisors, investors, as well as the financial managers.

This study aims to empirically examine the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) and corruption on the development of public-service sectors in 10 ASEAN countries. It then investigates whether this relationship is different between two FDI compositions including greenfield FDI and FDI in the form of cross-border merger and acquisitions (M&As). Using a panel database of 10 ASEAN countries during the period 1996-2015 from various sources including the World Development Indicators of the World Bank and UNCTAD, we first find that FDI strongly and positively contributes to the development of the public-service sectors in the recipient nations, except for the electricity sector. However, we show that this relationship is dependent on the type of FDI modes of entry. Specifically, while greenfield investment exerts a beneficial influence on the development of telecommunication and transportation sectors, cross-border M&A has no effect on these sectors, perhaps because of the distinct differences among three public service sectors. Finally, we found that in a highly corrupt environment, aggregate FDI might have no influence on all three public-service sectors, possibly because the two contradictory influences of the interaction terms between corruption and two FDI sub-types seem to cancel each other out.