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The study examines the association between the different types of blockholdings, the levels of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure, and liquidity of shares traded in Malaysian public listed companies (PLCs) on Bursa Malaysia. The sample consists of 194 most actively traded PLCs for the year 2009. A CSR index was constructed using the criteria used by a leading newspaper that provides an annual CSR award. We suggest that such CSR awards help legitimize the business activities of PLCs in the eyes of a government promoting sustainable business practices. The study finds that while insider blockholdings increases the trading friction and reduces liquidity, the nongovernmental institutional blockholdings improve the liquidity of shares traded on Bursa Malaysia. Moreover, the government institutional blockholdings interacts with the CSR disclosure levels to affect the liquidity of the shares traded. These findings make important contributions to emerging capital markets where government regulations incentivize CSR disclosures and the involvement of institutional investors in the governance of PLCs are the norm. Data Availability: The authors are willing to share the data for use by others in extending or replicating results reported in their articles (send request to Ms. Dhoraisingham at: shymala.dhoraisingam@monash.edu).

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PurposeThis study aims to investigate the implication of top executives’ number of years of experience (tenure) on corporate risk-taking behaviour and corporate performance in Malaysian corporations.Design/methodology/approachTo test the hypothesis efficiently, the authors have extracted the data from Bloomberg for 788 listed companies of the Malaysian Stock Exchange. The methodology entails ordinary least squares regressions, quantile regression and dynamic system generalized method of moments model.FindingsFirst, the authors show that executive management tenure has a significant negative relationship with corporate risk-taking. It means that the long-tenured executives tend to undertake less risky strategies and decisions. Second, this study reveals that the longer executive management tenure has a positive relationship with corporate performance. Third, the moderating effect of corporate risk-taking with executive tenure (Tenure dummy*Risk) has a negative relationship with the corporate performance by 1%.Practical implicationsIt implies that the appointment of experienced executive management contributes towards corporate performance directly. However, experienced management trends take less risk, which eventually results in mitigating the corporate performance. On that basis, the findings are significant in highlighting the usefulness of executive leadership term and offers insights to academics, practitioners and policymakers.Originality/valueThis paper is novel since it is unique in evaluating the executive tenure and the preferences to handle risk strategies and how that impact the firm performance.

This paper examines the association between growth opportunities and dividend payouts and moderates the relationship between growth opportunities and dividend payouts. Our sample consisted of the Malaysian top 300 public listed companies (in terms of market capitalization) for a period from 2004 to 2011. Based on a specified selection process, the sample contained 1330 firm-year observations, after excluding firms with missing data. This paper finds that growth opportunities is associated with less dividends payouts and that this relationship is weaker for Bumiputera ethnic controlled firms. Furthermore, the results show that this negative association exists only for non-Government Linked Controlled firms

Background: Acute Abdominal pain is an important surgical problem in all age groups. Early diagnosis is needed to rule out life threatening conditions. Diagnostic laparoscopy is a modern useful tool in giving proper treatment for all needed individuals. The aim of the present endeavor is to study the use of laparoscope in patients with acute pain over the abdomen, to diagnose and confirm conditions like acute appendicitis, appendicular abscess, doudenal perforation, ileal perforation. Ovarian torsion. mass formation, etc. where clinical and imaging studies are inconclusive.Methods: This study was conducted in the tertiary care hospital and the Department of General Surgery, Melmaruvathur Adhiparasakthi Institute of Medical Science and Research, Melmaruvathur. The period of study was from June 2017 to May 2018. All patients coming to the hospital with acute abdominal pain in the age group of ten years to seventy years were included in this study. Results: Majority of the patients had the findings relevant to the correct clinical diagnosis. However significant number of patients had unexpected findings and so the diagnosis was changed, and treatment also changed. Total 100 patients were included in this prospective study. 79 patients were found to have acute appendicitis. Duodenal perforation seen in 7 patients. Jejunal perforation seen in 2 patients. Mesenteric ischemia seen in 1 patient. Acute cholecystitis seen in 3 patients. Gall bladder perforation seen in 1 patient. Ectopic pregnancy was seen in 2 patients. Ovarian torsion seen in 3 patients. Ileocecal tuberculosis seen in 1 patient. No abnormality seen in 1 patient.Conclusions: The best approach in abdominal pain is to do diagnostic laparoscopy and proceed, rather than going for open laparotomy. Diagnostic laparoscopy gives all benefits of minimal invasive surgery. Not much of pain, shorter period of hospitalization, small scars, low infection rates and most importantly, accurate diagnosis and the correct treatment of most of the intra-abdominal conditions are the gifted things.

This paper investigates the shareholder wealth impact of government investment in listed companies (and by extension, government subsidisation of those companies), using data from Malaysia. We distinguish two overlapping categories of government-related investors: those whose principal mission relates to economic policy and those whose principal mission relates to social policy. The methodology entails Ordinary Least Squares regressions. There are two dependent variables measuring management success at generating shareholder wealth: an intrinsic value surrogate and return on equity. The final sample comprises 1732 company–year observations from the investigation period 2011–2014. The evidence indicates that companies subject to shareholder by a government-related investor with a social (economic) policy mission are more (less) successful at generating wealth than companies without any government shareholding at all. The findings indicate that for companies subject to ownership by government investors with a mission related to economic policy, government subsidies are wealth-enhancing, subject to diminishing marginal returns beyond a threshold level of government shareholding. The research design reflects adaptations to the Malaysian institutional setting via choice of control variables and usage of data from a leading Malaysian equity analyst.

The Malaysian capital market regulators take great efforts to continuously enhance corporate governance codes and practices to improve transparent reporting and enhance board responsibility and investors’ protection. In 2017, the Malaysian Institute of Corporate Governance published a report assessing the transparency of reporting by top 100 listed companies in respect of anti-corruption, organizational disclosure, and sustainability. This study uses this unique set of data on scores on anti-corruption commitment, organizational transparency, and sustainability to investigate the association between corporate transparency and firm value, and whether political connections moderate this relationship. Not surprisingly, findings show that listed government-linked companies (GLCs) have higher scores than non-GLCs, such as family and foreign firms. Firms with enhanced anti-corruption commitment are more likely to have higher firm value, and this relationship is stronger for politically connected firms. The implications for investors and regulators are discussed in this paper.