Retrenchment strategy has gained its popularity and is being regarded as a common strategy in

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether real estate companies manipulate their earnings through the brokerage fee across ownership expropriation or not. Design/methodology/approach -This study considers Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange listed real estate firms to investigate how the brokerage fee in the real estate industry might affect the earnings management of firms across its ownership expropriation. Using annual report data, the authors investigate the associations over a panel for the period 2008−2012. Robust panel regression is used to divulge the probability values with reference by probit regression. Findings -Overall, the results show that high brokerage fees would drive more events of earnings management and that, generally, the ownership concentration among Malaysian real estate firms significantly affects the earnings management of the firms.Practical implications -This study shows that firm profitability and brokerage fees enhance the probability of firm's earnings management. A low brokerage fee would reflect low revenue to the company. Therefore, management would opt to manipulate earnings in order to overstate earnings, which garners more interest from investors. Originality/value -Real estate values in Malaysia have climbed steadily over the years due to a combination of reasons giving companies a higher brokerage fee. Earnings management has become a big issue for property investors. The study demonstrates the relationship between earnings management and brokerage fee across ownership expropriation which can be considered by shareholders in their own strategic planning and investors in their own investing.

Retrenchment strategy has gained its popularity and is being regarded as a common strategy in the corporate world to cut down cost. Firm owners are sceptical whether it would be a value-added strategy for their organisations. A problem arises: "Does retrenchment strategy really contribute to the firms?" Empirical research was conducted to investigate retrenchment as an influence component of the company performance. Evaluation outcomes for a sample of Malaysia firm years from 2008-2013 are analysed that included excess value, retrenchment cost, and corporate use of financial variables. From the results, we document a positive association between the excess value of retrenchment cost. Our finding is consistent with prior research where it concluded retrenchment is positively related to turnaround performance. We also examine a special moderator variable for ownership expropriation and find there is negatively and significant relationship between ownership structures and excess value, where foreign and government underperformed in imposing retrenchment strategy. However, our research further indicates that ownership concentration does not play significant role on the association between excess value and retrenchment cost. Based on the results, it suggests that retrenchment cost and ownership structure plays a monitoring role in organization strategy decision making. The implication of this research lies in two main points. Firstly, it enriches the body of knowledge by showing the effectiveness of retrenchment strategy in value creation, and the role of corporate governance on that relationship. Secondly, it contributes to regulator or policy maker that retrenchment strategy might have a good corporate governance to create value. As such, this research implies to industry that retrenchment strategy might gain value to certain type of firm and certain level of ownership.