On January 28, 2019, the US Department of Justice announced criminal charges against Huawei. A pair of indictments accusing Huawei of violating the US sanctions as well as stealing trade secrets was unsealed in two separate cases. In fact, as a technology-intensive enterprise, Huawei has always been under close scrutiny from the US government for ‘national security’ concerns, and both the criminal allegations have existed for years. The Chinese side questioned the American motives, accusing that the US is actually using law enforcement as one tool among many to achieve its policy objectives in the Huawei case. The article presents the Chinese side of the case as well as the grounds for its position.

Introduction Brand equity has been receiving utmost attention in academia and practice over the past decades and continues to be of significant interest. Brands have been identified as one of the most valuable assets and firms try to leverage brands in increasingly complex brand portfolios. A large body of literature exists on spillover effects with regard to brand extensions. However, little is known about how corporate branding within product brand communication impacts brand equity. Therefore, this study examines to what extent product brand attitudes spill over to corporate brands. Furthermore, it investigates how corporate branding affects corporate brand attitude. Finally, the role of product brand familiarity, corporate brand familiarity and involvement in brand leverage and dilution is assessed. Method and data Answers to these questions are provided with a sample of 407 subjects that participated in an online experiment and were presented with a print ad either for brands in the FMCG or pharmaceutical category. The experiment included a 2 (corporate brand familiarity: high or low) x 2 (product brand familiarity: high or low) x 2 (category involvement: high or low) x 2 (corporate brand presence: yes or no) factorial design. Measures included brand attitude, attitude towards the ad, brand familiarity and category involvement. Analysis of covariance is employed to test for main effects and interaction effects, pairwise comparisons to test for group differences and multigroup analysis by means of structural equation modelling and path analysis to test for differences in effect sizes for the spillover between product brands and corporate brands. Summary of findings The study provides evidence that corporate brand presence in product brand communication affects corporate brand attitude and that a significant effect is observed for the affective component of corporate brand attitude. No significant effect is found for the cognitive component. Other than expected, the findings demonstrate that corporate brand presence of familiar corporate brands in the high-involvement category (FMCGs) leads to affective corporate brand dilution. Consistently and irrespective of category, the results indicate that corporate brand presence leads to affective corporate brand dilution when corporate brand familiarity and product brand familiarity are low or when product brand familiarity and corporate brand familiarity are high. A tendency for affective brand leverage is indicated for unfamiliar corporate brands when product brands are familiar, which however requires further investigation. Moreover, the findings indicate that the degree of spillover effects differs for the two categories as hypothesized. Stronger positive effects occur in the high-involvement category of FMCGs. Key contributions The findings reveal that corporate brand presence affects corporate brand attitude while differentiating between an affective and cognitive component. Such a differentiation is indispensable as affective effects prevail. Furthermore, this study sheds light on category-specific effects. While corporate brands in the FMCG category evoke stronger positive spillover, the negativity effect of corporate brand presence supersedes and results in brand dilution irrespective of product brand familiarity. Independent of category, when product brands and corporate brands are either low in familiarity or high in familiarity, corporate brands suffer from brand dilution. However, brand dilution is not observed when unfamiliar corporate brands appear with familiar product brands indicating potential for brand leverage. The findings of this study provide new insights into the interplay between product brands and corporate brands and offer valuable guidance for brand communication in both categories. Although corporate branding within product brand communication is increasingly being practiced, these results should encourage brand managers to carefully consider whether corporate brand presence enhances brand equity or presents a liability.

In today’s global marketplace, few consumers would bat an eye at a Central European retailer selling products manufactured in the US from raw materials purchased in Asia and Africa. Recently, Finnish connoisseurs of local craft beer were shocked to discover that even their local microbreweries were getting in on the act, albeit somewhat involuntarily. Strict regulations that govern the sale of alcoholic beverages in Finland essentially prevent the smallest breweries from distributing their products in the local market. Ironically, the only way for these small businesses to reach their local customers is through internationalization – setting up an online store across the border and serving the Finnish market from abroad. Drawing on the context of alcohol policy in Finland as an illustrative example, this study demonstrates how global markets can offer small businesses a way to counter unfavorable or discriminative local public policy. The study also illustrates the potential impact that businesses can have on policy by drawing public attention to its shortcomings, and offers implications for practitioners by highlighting the importance of thorough evaluation of policies for possible inconsistencies and outlining possible indicators that such inconsistencies may be present.

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 investigate the relationship between the variables of Current Ratio (CR), Return-on-Equity (ROE), Return-on-Assets (ROA), Debt-to-Equity Ratio (DER), and Firm Size (FS) on Dividend Policy (DP) in real estate and property companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange in the period 2016-2019, looking at nine real estate companies in Indonesia. The research methodology uses an explanatory analysis approach and linear regression. Based on the eligibility and homogeneity of the data, the number of sample companies selected was nine companies. The company’s financial statement data derived from primary data obtained on the Indonesia Stock Exchange, such as current ratio (CR), return-on-equity (ROE), return-on-assets (ROA), debt-to-equity ratio (DER) and firm size and dividend policy variables. The data analysis procedure is first to transform financial data from the original ratio data into interval data and, then, transform it to ordinal data. Furthermore, the validity and reliability process are ignored because the data is primary. Finally, regression testing is part of the hypothesis testing stage. The results of this study showed that the CR, ROE, and firm size had no positive and significant effect on dividend policy. In contrast, DER and ROA have a positive and significant impact on dividend policy.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to find out the impact of financial leverage on firm’s profitability in the listed textile sector of Bangladesh. Research design, data and methodology: A sample of 22 DSE listed textile firms has been used to conduct the study. In this study, firm profitability is measured by Return on Equity (ROE) and both short term debt and long term debt are used as the as proxies of financial leverage. Pooled Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), Fixed Effect (FE), and Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) models have been used to test the relationship between financial leverage and profitability of firms. Result: This study finds a significant negative relationship between leverage and firm’s profitability using the Pooled OLS method. The result is also consistent with the fixed effect and GMM method. This result implies that firm’s profitability is negatively affected by the firm’s capital structure. Conclusion: The study concludes that maximum textile firms use external debt as a source of finance as they don’t have sufficient internally generated funds. This study recommends that firm should give more emphasize on generating fund internally to meet up their financing needs.

We provide one of the first investigation on the impact of the degree of total leverage to the dividend policy of bank. We use a large sample of US bank holding companies from 2000:Q1 to 2017:Q4 to shed light our research question. Our empirical analysis provides consistent evidence that banks with high degree of total leverage (i.e. banks with a relatively high fixed-to-variables costs) are less likely to pay dividends, and they spend a lower fraction of incomes to pay back shareholders, suggesting a higher conservatism in dividend policy of banks subject to high degree of total leverage. The evidence remains unchanged with alternative econometric approaches, alternative measures of dividend policy and degree of total leverage. We further document that this higher conservatism is strengthened for a sample of banks with low franchise value during the financial crises. Our result suggests that the conservatism in dividend policy of banks with high degree of total leverage seems to be related to the precautionary motives aimed at preserving corporate resources under financial distress. Our study contributes to the literature of cost structure and dividend policy by pointing out that the impacts of the degree of fixed-to-variable expenses to dividend policy are extended to the case of banks.

The relationship between corporate board attributes and dividend payout is already established yet mediating role of leverage in not been examined in Malaysian market. Therefore, this study aims to examine the mediating effect of financial leverage on the relationship between corporate board attributes and the dividend pay-out policy. A sample of 203 non-financial firms listed on the BURSA Malaysia between 2005 and 2018 were analysed using SmartPLS 3.0. The findings show that there is a partial mediating effect of financial leverage on the relationship between board members age, board diversity and dividend pay-out policy. Financial leverage also mediates the relationship between number of women on board, CEO-duality and dividend pay-out policy. However, financial leverage doesn’t mediate the relationship between board size and dividend pay-out policy. This study offers insights to policy-makers to develop a better corporate governance as well as a guidance to firms in the construction and implementation of their corporate governance policies in relation to financial leverage. This study also shed light on the influence of efficient corporate board attributes on dividend pay-out policy and financial leverage for firm growth. This study concludes that corporate board attributes impact capital structure and thus, firms may change its payout policy.

The study examines the effects of growth opportunities, debt maturity and liquidity risk on leverage, making use of a large panel of Chinese listed firms. Research on capital structure has broadened its scope from a single capital structure decision (the debt/equity choice) to various attributes of the debt in firms’ capital structure. We use the system Generalized Method of Moments estimator to control for unobserved heterogeneity and the potential endogeneity of regressors. We find a negative relationship between growth opportunities and leverage. Further, we find that while the proportion of short-term debt attenuates the negative effect of growth opportunities on leverage, it negatively affects leverage as predicted by the liquidity risk hypothesis. When we distinguish between state owned firms and private controlled firms, we find evidence that these effects are only relevant to private controlled firms. However, our analysis indicates that the economic implication of liquidity risk effect is much lower for Chinese firms than that observed in the literature for US firms. Our study suggests that these differences can be explained by differences in the institutional environment in which firms operate. This finding related to Diamond’s (1991) liquidity risk hypothesis extends our understanding of the relationship between liquidity risk and the debt maturity choice.

Total debt in the People’s Republic of China surged to nearly 290% as a ratio to GDP by the second quarter of 2016, mostly on account of non-financial corporate debt. The outpouring of credit to stem the impact of the global financial crisis accentuated industrial overcapacity in traditional sectors, such as steel, cement, and energy, while feeding asset bubbles in the property, equity and bond markets. At the Chinese corporate level, this has translated into weakened fundamentals and a fall in industrial profits, particularly of SOEs. As debtors struggle to service interest payments, non-performing loans (NPLs) have been on the rise. This paper assesses the financial fragility of the Chinese economy by looking at risk factors in the non-financial sector. We apply quantile regressions to a dataset containing all Chinese listed companies in Standard & Poor’s IQ Capital database. We find higher sensitivity over time of corporate leverage to some of its key determinants, particularly for firms at the upper margin of the distribution. In particular, profitability increasingly acts as a curb on corporate leverage. At a time of falling profitability across the Chinese non-financial corporate sector, this eases the brake on leverage and may contribute to its continuing increase.