지주회사 이익특성이 신용등급에 미치는 영향

초록

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the attributes of earnings of the holding company which recognizes equity method income from subsidiaries, affects the credit rating of the holding company. The earnings attributes of the holding company are different from those of general firms. First, accruals are bigger than cash flows from operations in earnings of the holding company. Secondly, the accruals persistence in the holding company is bigger than that in general firms. The equity method income, which is classified as accruals, comprises a large proportion of earnings in the holding company. Thus, the accruals of holding company, formed from the subsidiaries’ earnings, reflects not accruals persistence but earnings persistence. Since prior studies report that earnings persistence is bigger than accruals persistence (Sloan 1996; Francis et al. 2005), we anticipate that the accruals persistence of the holding company will be higher than that of the general firms. Similarly, we anticipate that a credit rating agency will highly evaluates more the persistent accruals of the holding company than those of general firms. The KOSPI sample from 2002 to 2010 is used to test these anticipations. The results are as follows. First, the accruals out of earnings are bigger in the holding company than general firms. Secondly, the accruals persistence for the future earnings in holding company is higher than that in general firms. Thirdly, compared to general firms, the accruals of the holding company have a more positive effect on the credit rating. These results imply that the accruals of the holding company have a positive incremental effect in the accruals-credit rating studies, due to the results of this study that report the accruals of holding company are more persistent than general firms for the future earnings. The contributions of this study are as follows. First, by providing results that the accruals persistence, formed from equity method income, is different to that of general firms, a new perspective is drawn for the research of the earnings quality, especially earnings persistence in accounting areas. Secondly, results of this study show that the credit rating agency considers not only the earnings persistence but also the accruals persistence, when they evaluate the credit rating of the holding company. Thirdly, if the holding company wants to hold or increase the credit rating more favorably, an effective way is to manage the equity method income well. we suggest that managing subsidiaries is very important to the holding company for its credit rating.

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