3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions

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    The impact of the global financial crisis on the capital structure of JSE listed companies in South Africa
    (2018) Steed, Dylan
    The aim of this thesis is to determine whether the Global Financial Crisis had an impact on the capital structure choices of South African firms listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) as well as to investigate whether their capital structure determinants differed before, during and after the crisis. 171 firms listed on the JSE across 9 different sectors were chosen for this study. The study used panel data over a 9-year period. Data for the three-year period 2004 to 2006 constituted the ‘before the Global Financial Crisis period’; data for the three-year period 2007 to 2009 constituted the ‘Global Financial Crisis period’ and data for the three-year period 2010 to 2012 constituted the ‘after the Global Financial Crisis period’. A panel regression model was used, and three different measures of leverage were tested. The findings indicate that the crisis had a significant impact on the capital structure of JSE listed firms. Firms were found to have lower levels of debt in the period before the crisis when compared with the crisis period. Furthermore, no significant change was found in firm leverage after the crisis, meaning that debt levels remained at similar levels after the crisis when compared with the period during the crisis. When looking at the determinants of the sampled firm’s capital structures, profitability, firm size and asset tangibility were found to have increased in significance in either the during, after-crisis period or both these periods, when compared with the before period. Growth opportunities were also found to be insignificant during the crisis but significant in both the before and after periods. Thus, it was these determinants that provided the mechanism through which JSE listed firms increased their leverage during the crisis. Ultimately, the results of this study point towards firms increasing leverage levels in times of economic crisis and financial distress
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    Impact of macroeconomic news on foreign exchange volatility
    (2016) Maserumule, Tseke
    Financial economists have spent a considerable amount of time trying to understand the impact of macroeconomic news announcements on exchange rates, more so evaluating how new information is incorporated into exchange rates. This study examines the impact of macroeconomic news announcements on exchange rate volatility. Unlike most studies that utilise developed market currency pairs, this study utilises high frequency USD/ZAR data. Macroeconomic news can affect exchange rates directly and indirectly through public and private information. However, this study only focuses on scheduled macroeconomic news announcements as they usually have market forecasts available to conduct analysis regarding the asymmetric news effects. The following asymmetries are evaluated into the study: news items by geographical location, no-news vs. surprise news announcements and positive vs. negative news announcements. We make the following findings in our empirical study: (i) After the release of a news announcement, the level of foreign exchange volatility rises. This event is independent of whether the news item surprised the market or not. (ii) We find that both South African and US news items significantly impact USD/ZAR volatility, suggesting that both US and South African news items are being used to formulate investor expectations regarding the future prospects of the currency pair. (iii) Negative news appears to have a greater impact on exchange rate volatility relative to positive news. This result is also state dependent, as investors tend to behave differently to news depending on the economic climate at that point in time. Investor cognitive biases also give rise to the asymmetric news effects on exchange rate volatility. Investors do not always act in rational manner, especially when faced with multiple news items that are contradictory to each other.
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    The global financial crisis dissection
    (2012-10-04) Li, Yijun
    A financial crisis is consisted by a major event or a series of events. Event analysis can be used to analyse the causes of the financial crisis. In this paper, we use the Bear Stearns event and the Lehman Brothers event to analyse the causes of the Global Financial Crisis, find the weakness of our financial system and therefore, we suggest remedy the regulatory shortcomings and intensify the international cooperation within central banks and international financial organisations.
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