Research On The Influence Of Top Management Team Heterogeneity On Zero-leverage Policy

The business development of an enterprise is closely related to its financing activities.Different financing methods and preferences will form different capital structures,which will have a significant impact on the value of the enterprise and shareholder's wealth.According to the classical capital structure theory,there is an optimal capital structure in a company.Using interest-bearing debt financing in a rational way can not only obtain the income of tax shield,reduce the agency cost,but also improve the value of the company.However,in the domestic and foreign capital markets,many enterprises do not use or rarely use interest-bearing debt financing,which is known as “The mystery of zeroleverage firms”.Therefore,the phenomenon of “zero leverage” has gradually become a hot topic of corporate finance research under the background of the deviation between reality and classical theory.At present,the research on “zero leverage” is mainly from the perspective of financing demand,governance structure and macroeconomic factors.Nevertheless,most studies ignored that Top Management Team,as the decision-maker,has an influence on the choice of corporate capital.According to the Upper Echelons theory,the TMT heterogeneity reflects the different cognitive preferences and values of TMT members,which affects their information selection and rational judgment,and thus has an important impact on the strategic decision-making of enterprises.In addition,the present research on the TMT heterogeneity mainly focus on corporate performance,and the research on the relationship between TMT heterogeneity and capital structure is very limited.However,the extent to which TMT affects corporate decision-making is often restricted by its own power,so the ownership structure also affects the management autonomy of TMT members,and then affects the choice of final decision-making.Therefore,this paper conducts an empirical analysis to explore zero-leverage policy from the perspective of TMT heterogeneity,using the data of A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2009 to 2018,and respectively verifies the regulatory role of the TMT's shareholding ratio and corporate's ownership concentration on its influence.The results show that the age,tenure,gender and professional background heterogeneity of the TMT have a positive influence on the zero-leverage policy.The TMT's shareholding ratio positively regulates the relationship between the TMT heterogeneity and the zero-leverage policy,but the regulatory role of the ownership concentration is not significant,which indicates that it has a greater influence on the zero-leverage policy.Finally,according to the results,this paper puts forward some relevant suggestions on how to construct a better TMT and optimize the financing channels.To sum up,this paper enriches the academic research on the zero-leverage policy and TMT heterogeneity,provides the experience and enlightenment of the capital structure selection and the TMT construction for Chinese enterprises,which has better theoretical and practical significance.