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Jenny Zha Giedt Assistant Professor of
Accountancy George Washington University School of Business Washington, DC
- Potential changes in corporate control; the preliminary sale
process in mergers & acquisitions
- Financial accounting and reporting quality, which
includes accruals quality and disclosure choice
[7] Zha Giedt, J. (2021) "Economic
Consequences of Announcing Strategic Alternatives." Link Currently revising. Motivation: Little is known about the consequences
of publicly revealing that a company is exploring strategic alternatives, yet managers and directors face this disruptive
disclosure decision when their company seeks to sell itself in the M&A market. At first glance, the average announcement
return of 6% suggests that this voluntary disclosure increases shareholder value. However, the eventual success or failure
of the firm's attempt to sell itself allows me to identify the costs and benefits associated with disclosure: a valuation
premium is only captured if a sale is consummated. Otherwise, if a firm announces that it's seeking strategic alternatives
but ultimately fails to sell itself, the announcement premium gradually reverses and the long-run abnormal returns are negative!
Further tests examine some potential mechanisms of how the announcement may affect firm value: the announcement leads to raised
investor attention, a greater number of bidders in the sale process, worse operating performance, and more departing employees. [6] Zha Giedt, J. (2018) "Why Are Firms Sold? Disentangling Target Motives and Bidders' Selection of
Targets." Link Motivation: In the mergers and acquisitions literature, prior studies
explain why certain firms become targets by comparing ex-post target firms to non-target firms. However, due
to their sample construction, those studies cannot disentangle target motives from the traits selected for by bidders. This
study uses an intermediate sample of firms that are evaluating strategic alternatives to distinguish two selection processes:
(1) underperforming, low-q firms self-select to become potential targets and (2) the relatively better performing,
higher-q firms are chosen by bidders. This study provides evidence for the bankruptcy avoidance hypothesis and suggests
a unique interpretation of the inefficient target hypothesis: acquirers are not targeting the poorly performing firms; rather,
the poor-performing firms are putting themselves up for sale. Furthermore, this study compares firms that voluntarily disclose
their strategic alternatives with firms that experience a media leak, to uncover differences in the firms whose information
is disseminated via these alternative information channels.
Published Papers
[5] Nezlobin, A., R. G. Sloan, and J.
Zha Giedt. (2022) "Construct Validity in Accruals Quality Research." The Accounting Review. Link Motivation: This
study provides a analytical and numerical assessment of the most commonly-used measures of accruals quality. An ideal empirical measure of AQ would not be associated with underlying
economic parameters of a firm's earnings; moreover, it would also be monotonically increasing or decreasing in the presence
of various types of accruals errors and have significant test power to detect lower AQ in the treatment versus control firms.
While none of the 5 extant or 2 new measures we analyze provide a panacea, they vary in how close they come to achieving the
ideal characteristics. Our results should be useful
to researchers in choosing which combination of accrual quality proxies to use and in interpreting research findings. [4]
Larson, C. R., R. Sloan, and J. Zha Giedt. (2018) "Defining, Measuring and Modeling Accruals: A Guide for Researchers."
Review of Accounting Studies. Link Motivation: Measures of accruals and models of discretionary accruals
are widely used in financial accounting research. Yet, empirical researchers are faced with many measures and models to choose
from, where some of popular choices are incomplete and fragmented. To guide researchers, this paper provides a comprehensive
definition and measure of accruals, and shows how some of the extant measures of accruals fit in as a component of "comprehensive
accruals." For researchers interested in modeling non-discretionary accruals, this paper provides a more comprehensive
model specification that takes into account the normal properties of accruals. Overall, we urge researchers to carefully consider
which measure of accruals to use and how to model normal variation in accruals. [3] Zha Giedt, J. (2018) "Modelling
Receivables and Deferred Revenues to Detect Revenue Management." Abacus (Special Issue on Earnings Management). Link | PDF Motivation: Researchers and regulators interested in detecting managerial discretion in revenue recognition
should examine specific revenue-related accruals, specifically accounts receivables and deferred revenues. The proposed revenue
accruals model combines and extends Caylor's (2010) and Stubben's (2010) models. This new model exhibits
greater goodness-of-fit, greater power, and less misspecification than extant models. The intuition is as follows: First,
the origination of an accounts receivable accrual is explained by contemporaneous revenue, and the reversal is explained by
future cash collections from customers. Second, the origination of a deferred revenue accrual is explained by contemporaneous cash collections from customers, and the
reversal is explained by future recognized revenue. ΔAccounts
receivablet = α0 + α1*1/Avg assetst + α2*ΔRevenueQ123t + α3*ΔRevenueQ4t + α4*ΔCash flow from salest+1 +
et ΔDeferred revenuet =
α0 + α1*1/Avg assetst + α2*ΔCash flow from salest + α3*ΔRevenuet+1 + et
[2] Patatoukas, P. N., R. G. Sloan, and J. Zha. (2015)
"On the Pricing of Mandatory DCF Disclosures: Evidence from Oil and Gas Royalty Trusts." The Accounting Review. Link Motivation: In the value-relevance literature, tests of the relation between
an asset's value on the financial statements and the asset's market value are typically plagued by measurement issues, from
imputing the asset's market value, and model misspecification issues, from imperfectly controlling for the company's other
assets and liabilities. Oil and gas royalty trusts, however, provide a cleaner setting to conduct a value-relevance test because
the primary assets of these trusts are mature oil and gas reserves, their other assets and liabilities are negligible, and the asset's estimated value is clearly disclosed in 10-Ks. We find that managerial DCF estimates of oil
and gas reserves are priced by investors, yet investors may buoyantly overlook the finite nature of these reserves until media converage
prompts the stock price to coverge with the DCF estimate. [1] Dechow,
P. M., R. G. Sloan, and J. Zha. (2014) "Stock Prices and Earnings: A History
of Research." Annual Review of Financial Economics. Link | PDF Motivation: The
financial accounting and capital markets literature is storied and vast. This paper summarizes the main properties of earnings
and its components, and how they are useful to investors and relate to stock prices. Select empirical findings in this area
are extended to the present period, including price and volume reactions to accounting information, the value-relevance of
various earnings measures, and portfolio returns to accounting-based trading strategies.
Other Articles [8] Zha Giedt, J. (2021) "Should A Company Reveal that It Is Evaluating 'Strategic Alternatives'?" Duke
University School of Law FinReg Blog. Link Motivation: Before publicly revealing that the company is evaluating strategic
alternatives, the executive leadership should consider the potential benefits and drawbacks of the news affecting share prices,
the M&A sales process, employees and customers. There
is no correct 'one size fits all' approach, but the decision should weigh the individual company's circumstances. This article
describes some key considerations.
About Me
Jenny is an Assistant Professor at the George Washington
University School of Business. Her research examines financial accounting quality and disclosure choices made by corporations
and their effects on the stock market and the market for corporate control. She currently teaches the financial accounting
core class in the undergraduate business curriculum and has previously taught a research seminar for doctoral students. Her research has been published in various academic journals including
The Accounting Review, Review of Accounting Studies, Abacus, and Annual Review of Financial Economics,
and practitioner outlets, such as Duke University School of Law's FinReg Blog. She is involved in academic and professional
service activities, including serving as a reviewer for journals and conferences, as a moderator for industry panel events
hosted by Bloomberg and the School of Business, and as a conference organizer for the accounting department's annual research
conference. Jenny graduated with a PhD in Business Administration with an Accounting emphasis from the
Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley in 2016 and was a Deloitte Foundation doctoral fellow during her studies. Her UC Berkeley dissertation explores why certain companies voluntarily announce that
they are seeking strategic alternatives, and documents the costs and benefits associated with the announcement. Her dissertation
is titled, "Voluntary Disclosure of Strategic Alternatives: A Cost-Benefit Analysis" (2016). Link Prior
to Berkeley, she worked as an auditor and forensic accountant at KPMG in Los Angeles, CA, and obtained her CPA license. She
also has prior experience in the mutual fund and hedge fund industries, with US Bank and Dorchester Capital, respectively.
She earned her Bachelor's degrees in Accounting and Business
Administration (Finance emphasis) and minored in Mathematics at the University of Southern California. In her spare time, Jenny enjoys ice skating, skiing, ballet, theatre and spending time with her family.
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