Can Shell-selling Improve Investor Relations Management?

With the vigorous promotion of the mergers and acquisitions market-oriented reform,mergers and acquisitions have become an important way for the capital market to support the development of the real economy.Compared with the ordinary type of assets restructuring,backdoor listing involves multiple stakeholders such as controlling shareholders,minority shareholders and the two transaction parties.It is a complex restructuring related to control and asset purchase.Chinese scholars have carried out a series of studies on backdoor listing from multiple perspectives,such as the motivation,cost-benefit analysis,performance analysis of backdoor listing,the influencing factors of shell resource value,and the comparative study of the two listing methods of backdoor listing and IPO.However,the existing literature mostly conducts studies on the listing behavior of the backdoor from the shell-buying side.Few documents study the economic consequences of the selling behavior of listed companies,from the perspective of listed companies,based on the perspective of investor protection.Compared with major shareholders and institutional investors,minority shareholders are in a disadvantaged position,and the violation of minority shareholders'rights and interests has occurred frequently.The protection of minority shareholders'rights and interests is closely related to the development of the entire capital market and has an important impact on the confidence and trust of investors.Investor relations management,which is an important part of the company's development strategy and corporate governance,can promote the healthy interaction between the company and investors,improve the corporate governance structure,enhance the company's value,protect the interests of investors,and promote the continuous improvement of China's capital market.What's more,it also has a great significance to the formation of investors' rational values.Then,in the specific situation of shells-selling,whether listed companies can respond appropriately to the management of investor relations and improve the quality of investor relations management is a subject worth studying.On the one hand,studying the influence of shells-selling on investor relations management can enrich the research on the economic consequences of backdoor listing,and investor relations management as one of the ways to improve the value of enterprises,can also provide an idea of the mechanism of impact of backdoor listing on performance.On the other hand,this paper also enriches the relevant research on the influencing factors of investor relations management,and provides policy enlightenment for securities regulators to effectively supervise capital market and fully protect investors' rights.Based on the data of the A-share backdoor listed companies from 2004 to 2016,this paper empirically tests the impact of the selling behavior of listed companies on the quality of investor relations management,based on the perspective of actual controller change and business transformation.Specifically,this paper not only studies the overall impact of the selling of shells on investor relations management,but also examines the impact of shells-selling on the status and quality dimensions of investor relations management.For the measurement of investor relations management,this paper builds the IRM evaluation index system based on the previous research results.Most of the data is taken from the company's annual report and corporate social responsibility report,and most IRM data is first-hand data obtained by manual collection.The research results show that regardless of whether the actual controller of the listed company changes before and after the shell-selling,shell-selling is conducive to improving the quality of investor relations management,but the effect of market-selling behavior which the actual controller changes is even more pronounced.Listed companies have significantly improved their investor relations management after conducting business transformation.Further,the paper also finds that the higher the quality of accounting information,the more beneficial it is to strengthen the effect of shells-selling on investor relations management.In addition,the paper also examines the impact of equity concentration on the quality of investor relations management before and after shells-selling,and finds that the centralization of equity can also improve the quality of investor relations management.