London Business School

About: London Business School is a education organization based out in London, England, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Portfolio & Equity (finance). The organization has 1138 authors who have published 5118 publications receiving 437980 citations. The organization is also known as: LBS.

How Inventory Is (Should Be) Financed: Trade Credit in Supply Chains with Demand Uncertainty and Costs of Financial Distress

Abstract: A new substantially revised version of this paper under the title of "Trade Credit, Risk Sharing, and Inventory Financing Portfolios" is available for download at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2746645.As an integrated part of a supply contract, trade credit has intrinsic connections with supply chain contracting and inventory management. Using a model that explicitly captures the interaction of firms’ operations decisions and financial risks, this paper attempts to develop a deeper understanding of trade credit from an operational perspective. Revolving around the question of what role trade credit plays in channel coordination and inventory financing, we demonstrate that with demand uncertainty, trade credit enhances supply chain efficiency by serving as a risk-sharing mechanism. When offering trade credit, the supplier balances its impact on operational profit and costs of financial distress. Facing a trade credit contract, the retailer finances inventory using a portfolio of cash, trade credit, and short-term debt, where the structure of this inventory financing portfolio depends on the retailer’s financing need and bargaining power. Additionally, our model suggests that financial diversification, that is, employing multiple financing sources, provides an alternative explanation for the use of factoring in accounts receivable management and the decentralization of some supply chains. Finally, using a sample of firm-level data from Compustat, we find that the inventory financing pattern our model predicts exists in a wide range of firms.

Beyond strategic planning to organization learning: Lifeblood of the individualized corporation

Abstract: People are innately curious and, as social animals, are naturally motivated to interact and learn from one another. Over thousands of years, families, clans, and communities have evolved as teaching and learning groups, with individuals sharing information and synthesizing knowledge as a central part of their binding social interchange and as a key engine of their collective progress. Yet, somehow, modern corporations have been constructed in a way that constrains, impedes, and sometimes kills this natural human instinct. Focused on maximizing short‐term static efficiency, most have been designed to extract as much value as possible from all their assets, including people. In that process, however, they have sacrificed the long‐term dynamic efficiencies that come from continuously enhancing and upgrading the capabilities of individuals so as to enable them to create new value.

Small Firm Growth: Intentions, Implementation and Impediments

Abstract: Recent evidence suggests that many small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in the UK experience difficulty growing from the start-up phase into larger well established firms. This research uses survey data from UK instruments, printing and software SMEs to explore the attitudes of SME managers towards growth, to identify the strategies they pursue to achieve growth, and to establish the main factors they perceive to be limiting their growth. We find that although most managers profess to value growth and follow expansionary strategies, the main limits on the growth of SMEs are the intensity of competition stemming from the recession, and the inability or unwillingness of management to deal with the increased administrative burden arising from expansion.

The effect of pension accounting on corporate pension asset allocation

Abstract: We examine the impact of new pension disclosures and subsequent full pension recognition under FRS 17 and IAS 19 in the United Kingdom and SFAS 158 in the United States on pension asset allocation. These standards require recognition of net pension surplus/deficit on the balance sheet and actuarial gains/losses in other comprehensive income. Therefore, these standards introduce volatility into comprehensive income and balance sheets. We identify a disclosure period during which UK companies disclosed all the required data under FRS 17 in the notes without recognition. We also identify a full recognition period starting 1 year before until 1 year after the adoption of FRS 17/IAS 19 (UK) and SFAS 158 (US). We predict and find that UK companies, on average, shifted pension assets from equity to debt securities during both the disclosure and the full recognition periods. We also find that while before the adoption of SFAS 158 US companies maintained a stable allocation to equities and bonds, these companies, on average, shifted funds from equities to bonds around the adoption of SFAS 158. Cross-sectional analysis shows that the shift away from equities is related to changes in funding levels, shorter investment horizons, increased financial leverage, and the expected impact of the new standards on shareholders’ equity.