Corporate Performance of Malaysian Public Companies

Corporate Performance of Malaysian Public Companies 1.0 Introduction and motivation of study The issues of ownership and corporate governance have been discussed broadly in the prior literature especially in developed markets. However, in emerging economies like Malaysia, the issues received a vigorous impetus when the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) hit Malaysia with severity in 1997/98. The AFC had depressed the economy to negative 7.5% in 1998, around 84,000 people lost their job and Malaysian capital market lost estimated USD200 billion in term of market capitalization during the crisis (Series of Malaysia Economic Reports). At the same time, the value of Malaysian currency had been decrease dramatically from 2.52 ringgit to the US dollar in June, 1997 to a lowest of 4.50 ringgit to the US dollar in January, 1998 (Tourres, 2003), plunging the country into its first recession for many years. Weak financial systems, excessive foreign borrowing and lack of transparency were among factors that contributed to the crisis (Fischer, 1998). Following the AFC, the Malaysian government introduced several reform measures to enhance transparency and accountability to restoring market confidence and encourage more stable and long term international investment. Example of these are the establishment of the Malaysian Institute of Corporate Governance (MICG) in 1998, the introduction of Malaysian Code of Corporate Governance (MCCG) in March 2000  [1]  which codified the principles and best practices of good governance and the launched of Malaysias Capital Market Master Plan in 2002 as a comprehensive plan that identifies the strategic positioning and future of the Malaysian capital market. The Minority Shareholders Watchdog GROUP (MSWG) was also setup in 2001 as respond to the AFC. This study focuses on Malaysias capital market mainly because of the confidence shown by the international business community concerning investments in Malaysia especially after the economy has fully recovered from the AFC. Based on The Productivity and Investment Climate Survey, World Bank 2009, which reports firms perceptions of the business environment, suggests that Malaysia is a relatively attractive place for investors. Meanwhile, Report on Doing Business 2010 ranked Malaysia 23rd out of 183 economies for ease of doing business and recently the World Competitiveness Scoreboard 2010 placed Malaysia 10th of the most competitive economy in the world, up from 18th place in the previous year. The achievement of Malaysia economy to date partly contributing through the active roles plays by the government-linked companies (GLCs) that form the backbone of the structure of the Malaysian economy. GLCs and their controlling shareholders, government-linked investment companies (GLICs), constitute a significant part of the economic structure of Malaysia. GLCs employ an estimated 5% of the national workforce, account for approximately 49% of market capitalization (Ringgit Malaysia 235.5 billion) of Bursa Malaysia Securities, contributes about 17 percent of the nations gross fixed capital formation and account for almost 10 percent of Gross Domestic Product (Malaysia Economic Report, 2009/2010). More than that, GLCs also plays an important role in executing government policies and initiatives especially in key sectors and new growth sectors. Even with active divestment and privatization, GLCs remained as the main service providers to the nations key strategic utilities and services including electricity, telecommunications, airlines, airports, public transportations, banking and financial services. On top of that, GLCs also on forefront in implementing recommendations of the best practices affirmed in Malaysian Code of Corporate Governance for Malaysian Public Listed Companies (Corporate Governance Survey Report, 2008). In the meantime, Corporate Governance Watch 2007, an annual collaborative study of corporate governance landscape of Asian market undertaken by independent stockbroker CLSA Asia Pacific Markets and the Asian Corporate Governance Association noted general improvement at the GLCs, a function of GLCs reforms and greater openness. Finally, the research on GLCs performance in Malaysia is also very important in order to investigate the real achievement of GLCs Transformation Program, the special program that was launched in May 2004 by Malaysian government to improve the performance of GLCs. Recently, the total shareholder return of a selection of top 20 GLCs, has outperformed the benchmark index of Kuala Lumpur Composite Index (KLCI) by a compounded annual growth rat e of 2.4 percent since the launch of the program (Business Times, 2009). Motivate by the above reason, part of this study attempts to examine whether or not government ownership lead to better company performance by focusing on the unique characteristics of government ownership in GLCs. The research is an attempt to extend the literature in this field and to provide new insight and understanding on the roles of state in emerging market considering the limited number of research in this area. Hence, the first part of this study attempts to answer the following primary research question: Is there any significant relationship between ownership structure of government- linked companies in Malaysia and firm value? 2.0 Theoretical Foundations of the Study There are number of different theoretical frameworks to explain and analyze corporate governance. Difference frameworks approaches corporate governance in different way, for example; the agency theory arises from the fields of finance and economics and the stakeholder theory arises from social-orientated perspective on corporate governance. According to Mallin (2010, p.14), the main theories that have affected the development of corporate governance are agency theory, transaction cost economics, stakeholder theory and stewardship theory. All these theory from difference disciplines have contributed to the development of theoretical aspects of corporate governance and its frameworks. However, the main theory that generally associated with ownership of the firm is agency theory that widely used in previous researches around the world. Theoretical and empirical researches on the relationship between ownership and firm value was originally motivated by the separation of ownership from control (Berle Means, 1932) and more recently, by agency theory (Jensen Meckling, 1976; Fama Jensen, 1983). In this theory, the basic assumption is that the goals and objectives of the principals (owners) and managers (agents) conflict. The central problem in corporate governance is to construct rules and incentive to effectively align the behavior of managers with the desires of principals (Hawley and Williams, 1996). The problem of agents being responsible to principals is that it compounds the agency costs identified by Jensen and Meckling (1976) with the basic assumption is that managers will act opportunistically to further their own interests before shareholders and one of the main reasons that the desired actions of principal and agent diverge is their different attitude towards risk (Shankman, 1999). Under the circumstances, in Malaysia where there is a high concentration of government ownership in firms (Tam and Tan, 2007) and high percentage of firms affiliated to government (La Porta et al., 1999), the government ownership actually has capacity to provide a control mechanisms to align management personal objectives with firm objectives and eventually increase the firm value. Parts of GLCs in Malaysia are privatized firms during Malaysian Privatization Policy in 1990s. Hence, the firms always related to political variables and in that stance the political view of GLCs conceive that the high level of government interferences resulted of inefficiency to the firm rather than facilitate the operation. 3.0 Literature Review and Research Gaps In Malaysia context, GLCs are defined as companies that have a primary commercial objective and in which the Malaysian government has a direct controlling stake via the GLICs. The GLICs are investment arms of the government that allocate government funds to the GLCs (Putrajaya Committee on GLC High Performance, 2004; Lau and Tong, 2008). Meanwhile, the controlling stake here refers to the governments ability (not just percentage ownership) to appoint board members, senior management and/or make major decisions. The Ministry of Finance (1993) classify GLCs as one in which the Malaysian government had an effective ownership interest of at least 20 percent of equity shares. Twenty percent voting rights in one particular company is considered to be sufficient for effective control and is employed in previous studies on ownership (La Porta et al.,1999; Faccio et.al., 2001 and Setia-Atmaja, 2009). Majority of GLCs under the federal government are under Khazanah Nasional Berhad, one of the most active GLICs in Malaysia  [2]  . Empirical studies on the relationship between government ownership and firm performance on the whole produced inconclusive results. Study by Ang and Ding (2005) on the relationship between ownership structure of Singaporean GLCs and performance found that GLCs exhibit higher valuations than those of the non-GLCs. In a related study, Ke and Issac (2007) report that governments shareholding is positively related to corporate performance of Chinas listed property companies, suggested that the economy sector is matter in the country. The findings however inconsistent with other empirical studies on the government ownership in China where in overall found the negative relationship between these two variables. For example, Sun and Tong (2003); McGuiness and Ferguson (2005); Gunasekarage, Xu and Wang (1999) and Li, Sun and Zou (2009) find that on average, the firms performance is negatively influenced by the governments ownership. Research in Malaysia on the relationship between government ownership and performance is lacking and also show mixed findings. Recently, Lau and Tong (2008) conducted a research on the impact of government intervention on firm value by employed 15 listed GLCs under Khazanah Nasional Berhad from year 2000 to 2005 (90 firm-year observations). They reveal a significant positive relationship between the degree of government ownership and firm value. However, this study has shortcomings as the selected data sets of 15 GLCs a year under Khazanah Nasional Berhad are too small and not robust enough to represent the overall GLCs performance. In fact, there are many more listed GLCs under the controlled of federal government GLICs  [3]  as well as GLCs under the state government jurisdiction. This research aims to address this issue by providing in-depth examinations and comprehensive study on all GLCs both at federal and state level. In a related study in Malaysia, Tam and Tan (2007) find that the performance of firms associated to government ownership is poor compared to others ownership types namely; individual-owned firms, foreign-owned firms and trust fund-owned firms. The study involved the top 150 listed companies on Bursa Malaysia Securities based on their ranking according to their market capitalization in 2000. The similar results also found in research by Ming and Gee (2008); and Chu and Cheah (2006) that show the negative relationship between government ownership and firms corporate performance. However, those studies also have limitations as they fail to properly identify the unique characteristics of GLCs ownership in Malaysia. In their studies, they group together all types of GLCs in one group in an attempt to find its relationship to performance without addressing issues of (i) the different type of GLCs controlled by federal government and GLCs controlled by states government and (ii) the differe nt type of shares in GLCs. With regard to the first issue, distinctions should be made between GLCs controlled by federal government (GLCFGs) and those controlled by state governments (GLCSGs) predominantly because they are difference in aspects of monitoring by federal government machineries and GLICs. GLCFGs subjected to strict supervision and monitoring not only by its GLICs but by ministries concerned under federal government. For example, Tenaga Nasional Berhad, a GLCFG is the largest electric utility company in Malaysia with one governments special share and majority of it ordinary shares owned by Khazanah Nasional Berhad . The Ministry of Finance responsible to the issues pertaining to the corporate matters of the company such as the approval entity for appointment of CEO/board of directors, their contract extension or termination, company performance etc. The selection of company chairman or CEO is carefully chosen based on their capability and suitability to head the organization. In the meantime, matters pertaining to policy such as approval for electric tariff increment and monitoring of company obeying to energy policy of Malaysia are under the responsibility of Ministry of Energy, Green Technology and Water as a guardian ministry. In addition, National Audit Department also conducting an annual auditing or special auditing to this company to be reported in Auditors General Report that eventually to be presented in Parliament. Furthermore, Public Accounts Committee, a committee under Parliament also have right to investigate whatever issues surrounding the company such as mismanagement or issues highlighted in Auditors General Report. With all these stringent monitoring systems, the GLCFGs are more cautious in their actions and eventually lead to good corporate performance in the long run. On the other hand, the extent of monitoring and supervision of GLCSGs by respective state governments is weaker. All issues pertaining GLCSGs are to be monitor and solve by State Economic Development Corporation (SEDC), a controlling agency cum main shareholder of GLCSGs. As contended in Agency Theory, lack of monitoring efforts will increase the agency costs that eventually lead to poor firm performance. Furthermore, GLICs at federal government have more systematically systems and incentives in monitoring and improve its GLCs performance compared to its counterpart in state government. For example is the establishment of a special program aims to transform GLCs to high performers entity called GLCs Transformation Program (GTP) that was launched in May 2004. Under this program, 20 larger GLCs (G-20) that controlled by different federal government GLICs has been selected to be transformed into high performance entity and become regional or global champions. Since the launch the programme, G-20 have made significant improvement especially on their financial aspects with operating cash flow for non-financial G-20 firms grew by 42% from RM14 billion in 2004 to RM20 billion in 2008. At the same time, aggregate earnings for 2008 also 53% higher compared to performance in 2004 and total shareholder returns has outperformed the benchmark index of Kuala Lumpur Composite Index (KLCI) by a compo unded annual growth rate of 4.8% since the launch of the program (GTP Mid-Term Progress Review, 2009). With regard to this issue, based on above motivations the current study argue that the performance of listed GLCs controlled by federal government are better than it counterparts under the controlled of state government. On the second issue, previous studies with concerned to government ownership and performance have ignored the very important characteristic of GLCs in Malaysia which is GLCs with governments one special share or golden share. As a background, to stimulate economic growth and reduce Government financial burden, privatization policy was introduced in 1983 and a lot of government entities as well as hundreds of government projects had been implemented by private sector. From 1983 until 2003, 474 projects and 457 government entities had been privatized from 1983 until 2005 involving assets sale of RM1.54 billion and equity sales of RM4.94 billion (Economic Planning Unit, Prime Minister Department). Various type of privatization such as sale, leased, management contract and build-lease-transfer have been used. However, in some strategic entities such as ports, main utilities provider (e.g. Tenaga Nasional Berhad) and national carrier (Malaysian Airlines Systems Berhad), Malaysian governme nt directly retained one special share or well known as golden share on top of ordinary shares that possess by GLICs on behalf of the government. In this type of GLCs, the degree of Government interference is excessively. The golden share grant government not only right to control companys direction including the appointment/dismissal of Chairman, Board member, CEO and senior management but also make major decisions such as restructuring exercise, mergers and acquisition, assets disposal and even cancel whatever decision make by the firms for the interest of government  [5]  by the government in 2001 with cost closed to Ringgit Malaysia one billion (Jalleh M., 2005) was a good example of how this type of GLCs being protected by the government. Another prominent case was the bailout of national car company Perusahaan Otomobil Nasional or Proton by state-owned oil company, Petroliam Nasional Berhad (known as Petronas) during the AFC through cash injected by instruction of the gove rnment (Restall, 2000). Based on the arguments, the present study believed that, this type of firms should be treated separately from other normal GLCs to moderate the impact of government interventions. By group them together into one group of GLCs as carried out by previous studies in Malaysia is inappropriate and may have distorted their studies result. This research basically will address both of these issue by differentiate all GLCs in Malaysia into groups according to their controlling agency at federal or state level and also based on their type of shares to observe their impact to firms corporate performance. This study expected to form a distinctive contribution to the knowledge and provide new facts on some elements of the government ownership in emerging economies by providing in-depth analysis on the issue. To the best of my knowledge, no particular researcher so far focuses on examining government ownership and firm value by make use of these proposed approaches. In addition to that, others variable that related to government ownership such as the role of politicians, government official and ex- government officials as board members in GLCs and also the influence of degree of government ownership in GLCs will also be tested. 4.0 Hypotheses development This present study ultimately intended to test for any association between ownership structures of GLCs and firm value. A total of seven aspects have been identified and the hypotheses developed as to their probable effect and firm performance. 4.1 GLCs under federal and state government and firm performance There were not studies specifically relate this variable with performance in Malaysia, but study by Chen, Firth and Xu (2009) on Chinas listed company revealed that the performance of State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) affiliated to central government or in Malaysian context is federal government is outperformed their counterpart which are related to state and local government. They also argued that different form of government ownership have different motivation and objectives on investment and it lead to different performance outcomes for the companies they have invested in. According to Loh (2008), the Malaysias constitutional design clearly favors the federal over the state governments, both in term of legislative jurisdictions as well as in terms of revenue assignments. Based on this argument and motivations on the effectiveness of monitoring systems by federal government as discussed in 3.0, the proposed hypothesis is: H1: The impact of GLCs controlled by federal government on firm performance is stronger than GLCs controlled by states government 4.2 GLCs with governments special share and firm performance As explained in Section 3.0 above, governments golden share providing the government will unlimited power to control company directions and sometimes lead to misallocation of resources by the companies itself or by the government in order to assist them. The holding agency of this share is Ministry of Finance Incorporated, the entity under Ministry of Finance, Malaysia.  Although there is no empirical study so far that investigate the relationship between governments special share and performance in Malaysia, but study by Sun, Tong H.S, and Tong (2002) from Chinas privatization experience shows that too much government interference and control of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) was among the reasons of SOEs poor performance. Another argument is that, as of the perspective of minority shareholders, too much intervention from government will jeopardize the companys development and resulted poor performance in the long run. Hence, this type of company is not attractive for investo rs. Therefore, it is hypothesized that: H2: The impact of GLCs without governments golden share on firm performance is stronger than GLCs with governments golden share 4.3 Degree of government ownership and firm performance Like many others East Asian countries, Malaysias corporate sector also experiencing a high level of ownership concentration (Liew, 2007; La Porta et al., 1998). Gunasekarage et. al (2006) in their study on influence of the degree of state ownership on the performance of listed Chinese companies conclude that firms performance is significant at high levels of government ownership and a balanced ownership structure enhances the firm performance. Study by Ke and D.Isaac (2007) in China listed property companies from 2000 to 2002 also reveals that the government shareholding is positively related to corporate performance. In Malaysia context, Lau and Tong (2008) in their study of 15 listed GLCs in Bursa Malaysia for the period of 2000 to 2005 find a significant positive relationship between the degree of government ownership  [6]  and firm value. However, this study has limitation in term of selected data sets as laid out in Section 3.0. Therefore the variable will be re-testing with more comprehensive data sets in order to have more concrete and robust evidence on the influence of this variable to firm performance. In line with agency theory that concentrated ownership in more effective in reducing managerial agency cost, the proposed hypotheses are: H3: There is a significant relationship between governments ownership degree in GLCs and firm performance 4.4 Politicians as director and firm performance GLCs traditionally has some of its boards of directors that had affiliations with the ruling party especially those GLCs that previously under government control and later on involved in privatization. Johnson and Mitton (2003) noted that as of October 1999, 15.8% or 67 out of 424 firms listed on the Main Board of Bursa Malaysia Securities are politically connected to the ruling party. Empirical evidence on the association between politicians as director and its impact to firm value is inconclusive. Study by Xu, Zhu and Lin (2005) on state owned enterprises in China revealed that politicians have incentives to control the firms to achieve economically inefficient objectives for political purposes. In a related study, Shleifer and Vishny (1994) exposed that excess employment and wages are common in public enterprise that control by politicians. This unhealthy phenomenon could lead to wrong managerial investment decisions and result in misallocation of companys resources that eventuall y reduce the firm value. Boubakri, Cosset and Saffar (2008) investigate the association between political connections of newly privatized firms and the impact to performance. The study involved 245 privatized firms in 27 developing and 14 industrialized countries and the existence of political connections is based on whether the particular firms have a politician or an ex-politician on their boards. They find that the politically-connected firms exhibit a poor performance compared to their non-connected counterparts. The similar result also found in Fan et. al (2007). Meanwhile, Fisman (2001) in his study in Indonesia and Faccio (2006) in analysis of 47 countries find a significant relationship between these two variables. In the context of Malaysia where business and politics are inter-related (Gomez and Jomo, 1997) indicated that, participation of politicians in GLCs might have effects on firm value as they act as a link between the governments and companys management. Therefore, it is hypothesized that, H4: There is a significant relationship between politician as director and firm performance 4.5 Government officials as board member in GLCs and firm performance GLCs are created partly to implement government policy objectives especially those established as a result of privatization exercises in the early eighties. Hence, most of their board of directors are civil servants either still in-service or formal government officials that act as eyes and ear of government as well as communication bridge between the management and the government. Agrawal and Knoeber (2001) in their study found that the politically experience directors that comprises former government officials benefits the company they served and noted that they are more prevalent in firms compare to others outside directors. In a related study in Singapore that involved 25 GLCs and 204 non-GLCs for the period from 1990 to 2000, Ang and Ding (2006) found that GLCs exhibit higher valuations than those of the non-GLCs in the area of profitability, efficiency and firms financial performance. Like Malaysian GLCs, Singapore GLCs also comprises government officials in their board. At suc h, it is hypothesized that, H5: There is a significant relationship between in service government official as director and firm performance H6: There is a significant relationship between former government official as director and firm performance 5.0 Research design and methodology 5.1 Data and sample design The first model in this research is designed to examine the impact of ownership structure on corporate performance of all GLCs listed on the main board of Bursa Malaysia Securities for the period of five years (2004 until 2008). To ensure that the sample clearly represented the population intended for the research and to harmonious the selected sample to the GLCs definition, the sample selection is based on the following criteria: At any time, one specific GLICs either at federal or states government level must be the single largest shareholder with at least 20% share ownership in one particular company on Main Board of KLSE and; The financial and unit trust companies are excluded as they are governed by different set of rules and acts that could affect the end findings of this study. In addition, all required financial data for the study period are to be available in databases (Datastream or Thomson Research) and information on ownership and corporate governance structure from companies respective audited annual report. The study constructs an unbalanced panel data of all GLCs during the study period. This approach has the advantage of attrition biases in correlation (Hu and Izumida, 2008). The observations period of 2004 to 2008 is chosen mainly because the period was the phase of economic stability in Malaysia when the countrys economy and capitals market activities fully recovered after the Asian Financial Crisis. The performance chart in Figure 2 below reveals that prior to AFC, the Kuala Lumpur Composite Index (KLCI) in average has been trading in an upward trend. However, the AFC push down the KLCI to below 600 during the peak of the crisis. The post-crisis period has seen steady increase in the value of the KLCI even though until 2006 Bursa Malaysia Securities still has some 200 companies trading at more than 50 percent discount to their book values (James, 2006). Another reason for the chosen period is to evaluate the impact of GLCs Transformation Program that launch in May 2004 by Malaysian government to improve performance of GLCs. 5.2 Methodology 5.2.1 The proposed model The following base model will be used to test the hypotheses that have been defined in the previous section: PERFORM = ÃŽÂ ± + ÃŽÂ ²1FG_GLC + ÃŽÂ ²2SG_GLC + ÃŽÂ ²3GOLD + ÃŽÂ ²4GOV_OWN + ÃŽÂ ²5POL + ÃŽÂ ²6GO_BOD + ÃŽÂ ²7EX-GO_BOD + ÃŽÂ ²8LOG_SIZE + ÃŽÂ ²9LEV + ÃŽÂ ²10BOD_SIZE + ÃŽÂ ²11BOD_MEET + ÃŽÂ ²12BOD_IND + ÃŽÂ µi Where; PERFORM = the dependent variables: proxy by ROA, ROE and Tobins Q; Independent variables: FG_GLC = GLCs under federal government (equal to 1 if a firm is under federal government, and 0 otherwise) SG_GLC = GLCs under state government (equal to 1 if a firm is under states government, and 0 otherwise) GOLD = GLCs which government owned one golden share (equal to 1 if a firm has governments golden share, and 0 otherwise) GOV_OWN = captures the percentage of government ownership in a GLC POL = captures the percentage of politician on the board GO_BOD = captures the percentage of government official in-service on the board EX-GO_BOD = captures the percentage of ex-government official on the board Control variables: LOG_SIZE = natural log of total assets as proxy of firm size LEV = firm leverage (total liabilities to total assets) BOD_SIZE = number of board of directors during the year BOD_MEET = number of board of directors meetings during the year BOD_IND = captures the percentage of independent directors on the board ÃŽÂ µi = error term 5.2.2 Operationalization of variable selection 5.2.2.1 The dependent variable The dependent variable in this study is firm performance that comprises accounting and market based performance namely return on assets (ROA)  [8]  and Tobins Q. They are to be employed in this study to measure the impact of ownership structure on corporate performance. The accounting-based performance is the most common types of performance measurement in assessing business performance. In this approach, annual report, which comprises income statements, balance sheets and statements of changes in financial position are the source of information to analyze companys financial performance for one particular financial year. This approach is very important for companys stakeholders such as potential investors since the indicator can help them in making investment decisions. It also vital in helping the companys shareholders to assess how well the company performed in market place in order to make decisions on management and employees rewards, setting suitable plans to sustain the goo d momentum or even take drastic approaches for company to remain in business. The accounting-based performance also helps manager to effectively plan and control in order to achieve the objectives of the company. For example, according to Thompson Yeung (2001), return on equity as one of the accounting-based measurements can accommodate the effect of different accounting procedures across industries and can minimize the multi-linearity between companys specific characteristics such as size, age and profitability. Both ROA and ROE are the most common measurement used in analyzing financial performance of companies and have been used widely in previous studies (Vafeas,1999; Abdullah,2004; Bhagat Black, 2002; Rahman Haniffa 2006; Ang Ding, 2006; Bhagat Bolton; 2008 and Chu, 2009). Since accounting-based performance measures the past and current performance of the firm, m Corporate Performance of Malaysian Public Companies Corporate Performance of Malaysian Public Companies 1.0 Introduction and motivation of study The issues of ownership and corporate governance have been discussed broadly in the prior literature especially in developed markets. However, in emerging economies like Malaysia, the issues received a vigorous impetus when the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) hit Malaysia with severity in 1997/98. The AFC had depressed the economy to negative 7.5% in 1998, around 84,000 people lost their job and Malaysian capital market lost estimated USD200 billion in term of market capitalization during the crisis (Series of Malaysia Economic Reports). At the same time, the value of Malaysian currency had been decrease dramatically from 2.52 ringgit to the US dollar in June, 1997 to a lowest of 4.50 ringgit to the US dollar in January, 1998 (Tourres, 2003), plunging the country into its first recession for many years. Weak financial systems, excessive foreign borrowing and lack of transparency were among factors that contributed to the crisis (Fischer, 1998). Following the AFC, the Malaysian government introduced several reform measures to enhance transparency and accountability to restoring market confidence and encourage more stable and long term international investment. Example of these are the establishment of the Malaysian Institute of Corporate Governance (MICG) in 1998, the introduction of Malaysian Code of Corporate Governance (MCCG) in March 2000  [1]  which codified the principles and best practices of good governance and the launched of Malaysias Capital Market Master Plan in 2002 as a comprehensive plan that identifies the strategic positioning and future of the Malaysian capital market. The Minority Shareholders Watchdog GROUP (MSWG) was also setup in 2001 as respond to the AFC. This study focuses on Malaysias capital market mainly because of the confidence shown by the international business community concerning investments in Malaysia especially after the economy has fully recovered from the AFC. Based on The Productivity and Investment Climate Survey, World Bank 2009, which reports firms perceptions of the business environment, suggests that Malaysia is a relatively attractive place for investors. Meanwhile, Report on Doing Business 2010 ranked Malaysia 23rd out of 183 economies for ease of doing business and recently the World Competitiveness Scoreboard 2010 placed Malaysia 10th of the most competitive economy in the world, up from 18th place in the previous year. The achievement of Malaysia economy to date partly contributing through the active roles plays by the government-linked companies (GLCs) that form the backbone of the structure of the Malaysian economy. GLCs and their controlling shareholders, government-linked investment companies (GLICs), constitute a significant part of the economic structure of Malaysia. GLCs employ an estimated 5% of the national workforce, account for approximately 49% of market capitalization (Ringgit Malaysia 235.5 billion) of Bursa Malaysia Securities, contributes about 17 percent of the nations gross fixed capital formation and account for almost 10 percent of Gross Domestic Product (Malaysia Economic Report, 2009/2010). More than that, GLCs also plays an important role in executing government policies and initiatives especially in key sectors and new growth sectors. Even with active divestment and privatization, GLCs remained as the main service providers to the nations key strategic utilities and services including electricity, telecommunications, airlines, airports, public transportations, banking and financial services. On top of that, GLCs also on forefront in implementing recommendations of the best practices affirmed in Malaysian Code of Corporate Governance for Malaysian Public Listed Companies (Corporate Governance Survey Report, 2008). In the meantime, Corporate Governance Watch 2007, an annual collaborative study of corporate governance landscape of Asian market undertaken by independent stockbroker CLSA Asia Pacific Markets and the Asian Corporate Governance Association noted general improvement at the GLCs, a function of GLCs reforms and greater openness. Finally, the research on GLCs performance in Malaysia is also very important in order to investigate the real achievement of GLCs Transformation Program, the special program that was launched in May 2004 by Malaysian government to improve the performance of GLCs. Recently, the total shareholder return of a selection of top 20 GLCs, has outperformed the benchmark index of Kuala Lumpur Composite Index (KLCI) by a compounded annual growth rat e of 2.4 percent since the launch of the program (Business Times, 2009). Motivate by the above reason, part of this study attempts to examine whether or not government ownership lead to better company performance by focusing on the unique characteristics of government ownership in GLCs. The research is an attempt to extend the literature in this field and to provide new insight and understanding on the roles of state in emerging market considering the limited number of research in this area. Hence, the first part of this study attempts to answer the following primary research question: Is there any significant relationship between ownership structure of government- linked companies in Malaysia and firm value? 2.0 Theoretical Foundations of the Study There are number of different theoretical frameworks to explain and analyze corporate governance. Difference frameworks approaches corporate governance in different way, for example; the agency theory arises from the fields of finance and economics and the stakeholder theory arises from social-orientated perspective on corporate governance. According to Mallin (2010, p.14), the main theories that have affected the development of corporate governance are agency theory, transaction cost economics, stakeholder theory and stewardship theory. All these theory from difference disciplines have contributed to the development of theoretical aspects of corporate governance and its frameworks. However, the main theory that generally associated with ownership of the firm is agency theory that widely used in previous researches around the world. Theoretical and empirical researches on the relationship between ownership and firm value was originally motivated by the separation of ownership from control (Berle Means, 1932) and more recently, by agency theory (Jensen Meckling, 1976; Fama Jensen, 1983). In this theory, the basic assumption is that the goals and objectives of the principals (owners) and managers (agents) conflict. The central problem in corporate governance is to construct rules and incentive to effectively align the behavior of managers with the desires of principals (Hawley and Williams, 1996). The problem of agents being responsible to principals is that it compounds the agency costs identified by Jensen and Meckling (1976) with the basic assumption is that managers will act opportunistically to further their own interests before shareholders and one of the main reasons that the desired actions of principal and agent diverge is their different attitude towards risk (Shankman, 1999). Under the circumstances, in Malaysia where there is a high concentration of government ownership in firms (Tam and Tan, 2007) and high percentage of firms affiliated to government (La Porta et al., 1999), the government ownership actually has capacity to provide a control mechanisms to align management personal objectives with firm objectives and eventually increase the firm value. Parts of GLCs in Malaysia are privatized firms during Malaysian Privatization Policy in 1990s. Hence, the firms always related to political variables and in that stance the political view of GLCs conceive that the high level of government interferences resulted of inefficiency to the firm rather than facilitate the operation. 3.0 Literature Review and Research Gaps In Malaysia context, GLCs are defined as companies that have a primary commercial objective and in which the Malaysian government has a direct controlling stake via the GLICs. The GLICs are investment arms of the government that allocate government funds to the GLCs (Putrajaya Committee on GLC High Performance, 2004; Lau and Tong, 2008). Meanwhile, the controlling stake here refers to the governments ability (not just percentage ownership) to appoint board members, senior management and/or make major decisions. The Ministry of Finance (1993) classify GLCs as one in which the Malaysian government had an effective ownership interest of at least 20 percent of equity shares. Twenty percent voting rights in one particular company is considered to be sufficient for effective control and is employed in previous studies on ownership (La Porta et al.,1999; Faccio et.al., 2001 and Setia-Atmaja, 2009). Majority of GLCs under the federal government are under Khazanah Nasional Berhad, one of the most active GLICs in Malaysia  [2]  . Empirical studies on the relationship between government ownership and firm performance on the whole produced inconclusive results. Study by Ang and Ding (2005) on the relationship between ownership structure of Singaporean GLCs and performance found that GLCs exhibit higher valuations than those of the non-GLCs. In a related study, Ke and Issac (2007) report that governments shareholding is positively related to corporate performance of Chinas listed property companies, suggested that the economy sector is matter in the country. The findings however inconsistent with other empirical studies on the government ownership in China where in overall found the negative relationship between these two variables. For example, Sun and Tong (2003); McGuiness and Ferguson (2005); Gunasekarage, Xu and Wang (1999) and Li, Sun and Zou (2009) find that on average, the firms performance is negatively influenced by the governments ownership. Research in Malaysia on the relationship between government ownership and performance is lacking and also show mixed findings. Recently, Lau and Tong (2008) conducted a research on the impact of government intervention on firm value by employed 15 listed GLCs under Khazanah Nasional Berhad from year 2000 to 2005 (90 firm-year observations). They reveal a significant positive relationship between the degree of government ownership and firm value. However, this study has shortcomings as the selected data sets of 15 GLCs a year under Khazanah Nasional Berhad are too small and not robust enough to represent the overall GLCs performance. In fact, there are many more listed GLCs under the controlled of federal government GLICs  [3]  as well as GLCs under the state government jurisdiction. This research aims to address this issue by providing in-depth examinations and comprehensive study on all GLCs both at federal and state level. In a related study in Malaysia, Tam and Tan (2007) find that the performance of firms associated to government ownership is poor compared to others ownership types namely; individual-owned firms, foreign-owned firms and trust fund-owned firms. The study involved the top 150 listed companies on Bursa Malaysia Securities based on their ranking according to their market capitalization in 2000. The similar results also found in research by Ming and Gee (2008); and Chu and Cheah (2006) that show the negative relationship between government ownership and firms corporate performance. However, those studies also have limitations as they fail to properly identify the unique characteristics of GLCs ownership in Malaysia. In their studies, they group together all types of GLCs in one group in an attempt to find its relationship to performance without addressing issues of (i) the different type of GLCs controlled by federal government and GLCs controlled by states government and (ii) the differe nt type of shares in GLCs. With regard to the first issue, distinctions should be made between GLCs controlled by federal government (GLCFGs) and those controlled by state governments (GLCSGs) predominantly because they are difference in aspects of monitoring by federal government machineries and GLICs. GLCFGs subjected to strict supervision and monitoring not only by its GLICs but by ministries concerned under federal government. For example, Tenaga Nasional Berhad, a GLCFG is the largest electric utility company in Malaysia with one governments special share and majority of it ordinary shares owned by Khazanah Nasional Berhad . The Ministry of Finance responsible to the issues pertaining to the corporate matters of the company such as the approval entity for appointment of CEO/board of directors, their contract extension or termination, company performance etc. The selection of company chairman or CEO is carefully chosen based on their capability and suitability to head the organization. In the meantime, matters pertaining to policy such as approval for electric tariff increment and monitoring of company obeying to energy policy of Malaysia are under the responsibility of Ministry of Energy, Green Technology and Water as a guardian ministry. In addition, National Audit Department also conducting an annual auditing or special auditing to this company to be reported in Auditors General Report that eventually to be presented in Parliament. Furthermore, Public Accounts Committee, a committee under Parliament also have right to investigate whatever issues surrounding the company such as mismanagement or issues highlighted in Auditors General Report. With all these stringent monitoring systems, the GLCFGs are more cautious in their actions and eventually lead to good corporate performance in the long run. On the other hand, the extent of monitoring and supervision of GLCSGs by respective state governments is weaker. All issues pertaining GLCSGs are to be monitor and solve by State Economic Development Corporation (SEDC), a controlling agency cum main shareholder of GLCSGs. As contended in Agency Theory, lack of monitoring efforts will increase the agency costs that eventually lead to poor firm performance. Furthermore, GLICs at federal government have more systematically systems and incentives in monitoring and improve its GLCs performance compared to its counterpart in state government. For example is the establishment of a special program aims to transform GLCs to high performers entity called GLCs Transformation Program (GTP) that was launched in May 2004. Under this program, 20 larger GLCs (G-20) that controlled by different federal government GLICs has been selected to be transformed into high performance entity and become regional or global champions. Since the launch the programme, G-20 have made significant improvement especially on their financial aspects with operating cash flow for non-financial G-20 firms grew by 42% from RM14 billion in 2004 to RM20 billion in 2008. At the same time, aggregate earnings for 2008 also 53% higher compared to performance in 2004 and total shareholder returns has outperformed the benchmark index of Kuala Lumpur Composite Index (KLCI) by a compo unded annual growth rate of 4.8% since the launch of the program (GTP Mid-Term Progress Review, 2009). With regard to this issue, based on above motivations the current study argue that the performance of listed GLCs controlled by federal government are better than it counterparts under the controlled of state government. On the second issue, previous studies with concerned to government ownership and performance have ignored the very important characteristic of GLCs in Malaysia which is GLCs with governments one special share or golden share. As a background, to stimulate economic growth and reduce Government financial burden, privatization policy was introduced in 1983 and a lot of government entities as well as hundreds of government projects had been implemented by private sector. From 1983 until 2003, 474 projects and 457 government entities had been privatized from 1983 until 2005 involving assets sale of RM1.54 billion and equity sales of RM4.94 billion (Economic Planning Unit, Prime Minister Department). Various type of privatization such as sale, leased, management contract and build-lease-transfer have been used. However, in some strategic entities such as ports, main utilities provider (e.g. Tenaga Nasional Berhad) and national carrier (Malaysian Airlines Systems Berhad), Malaysian governme nt directly retained one special share or well known as golden share on top of ordinary shares that possess by GLICs on behalf of the government. In this type of GLCs, the degree of Government interference is excessively. The golden share grant government not only right to control companys direction including the appointment/dismissal of Chairman, Board member, CEO and senior management but also make major decisions such as restructuring exercise, mergers and acquisition, assets disposal and even cancel whatever decision make by the firms for the interest of government  [5]  by the government in 2001 with cost closed to Ringgit Malaysia one billion (Jalleh M., 2005) was a good example of how this type of GLCs being protected by the government. Another prominent case was the bailout of national car company Perusahaan Otomobil Nasional or Proton by state-owned oil company, Petroliam Nasional Berhad (known as Petronas) during the AFC through cash injected by instruction of the gove rnment (Restall, 2000). Based on the arguments, the present study believed that, this type of firms should be treated separately from other normal GLCs to moderate the impact of government interventions. By group them together into one group of GLCs as carried out by previous studies in Malaysia is inappropriate and may have distorted their studies result. This research basically will address both of these issue by differentiate all GLCs in Malaysia into groups according to their controlling agency at federal or state level and also based on their type of shares to observe their impact to firms corporate performance. This study expected to form a distinctive contribution to the knowledge and provide new facts on some elements of the government ownership in emerging economies by providing in-depth analysis on the issue. To the best of my knowledge, no particular researcher so far focuses on examining government ownership and firm value by make use of these proposed approaches. In addition to that, others variable that related to government ownership such as the role of politicians, government official and ex- government officials as board members in GLCs and also the influence of degree of government ownership in GLCs will also be tested. 4.0 Hypotheses development This present study ultimately intended to test for any association between ownership structures of GLCs and firm value. A total of seven aspects have been identified and the hypotheses developed as to their probable effect and firm performance. 4.1 GLCs under federal and state government and firm performance There were not studies specifically relate this variable with performance in Malaysia, but study by Chen, Firth and Xu (2009) on Chinas listed company revealed that the performance of State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) affiliated to central government or in Malaysian context is federal government is outperformed their counterpart which are related to state and local government. They also argued that different form of government ownership have different motivation and objectives on investment and it lead to different performance outcomes for the companies they have invested in. According to Loh (2008), the Malaysias constitutional design clearly favors the federal over the state governments, both in term of legislative jurisdictions as well as in terms of revenue assignments. Based on this argument and motivations on the effectiveness of monitoring systems by federal government as discussed in 3.0, the proposed hypothesis is: H1: The impact of GLCs controlled by federal government on firm performance is stronger than GLCs controlled by states government 4.2 GLCs with governments special share and firm performance As explained in Section 3.0 above, governments golden share providing the government will unlimited power to control company directions and sometimes lead to misallocation of resources by the companies itself or by the government in order to assist them. The holding agency of this share is Ministry of Finance Incorporated, the entity under Ministry of Finance, Malaysia.  Although there is no empirical study so far that investigate the relationship between governments special share and performance in Malaysia, but study by Sun, Tong H.S, and Tong (2002) from Chinas privatization experience shows that too much government interference and control of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) was among the reasons of SOEs poor performance. Another argument is that, as of the perspective of minority shareholders, too much intervention from government will jeopardize the companys development and resulted poor performance in the long run. Hence, this type of company is not attractive for investo rs. Therefore, it is hypothesized that: H2: The impact of GLCs without governments golden share on firm performance is stronger than GLCs with governments golden share 4.3 Degree of government ownership and firm performance Like many others East Asian countries, Malaysias corporate sector also experiencing a high level of ownership concentration (Liew, 2007; La Porta et al., 1998). Gunasekarage et. al (2006) in their study on influence of the degree of state ownership on the performance of listed Chinese companies conclude that firms performance is significant at high levels of government ownership and a balanced ownership structure enhances the firm performance. Study by Ke and D.Isaac (2007) in China listed property companies from 2000 to 2002 also reveals that the government shareholding is positively related to corporate performance. In Malaysia context, Lau and Tong (2008) in their study of 15 listed GLCs in Bursa Malaysia for the period of 2000 to 2005 find a significant positive relationship between the degree of government ownership  [6]  and firm value. However, this study has limitation in term of selected data sets as laid out in Section 3.0. Therefore the variable will be re-testing with more comprehensive data sets in order to have more concrete and robust evidence on the influence of this variable to firm performance. In line with agency theory that concentrated ownership in more effective in reducing managerial agency cost, the proposed hypotheses are: H3: There is a significant relationship between governments ownership degree in GLCs and firm performance 4.4 Politicians as director and firm performance GLCs traditionally has some of its boards of directors that had affiliations with the ruling party especially those GLCs that previously under government control and later on involved in privatization. Johnson and Mitton (2003) noted that as of October 1999, 15.8% or 67 out of 424 firms listed on the Main Board of Bursa Malaysia Securities are politically connected to the ruling party. Empirical evidence on the association between politicians as director and its impact to firm value is inconclusive. Study by Xu, Zhu and Lin (2005) on state owned enterprises in China revealed that politicians have incentives to control the firms to achieve economically inefficient objectives for political purposes. In a related study, Shleifer and Vishny (1994) exposed that excess employment and wages are common in public enterprise that control by politicians. This unhealthy phenomenon could lead to wrong managerial investment decisions and result in misallocation of companys resources that eventuall y reduce the firm value. Boubakri, Cosset and Saffar (2008) investigate the association between political connections of newly privatized firms and the impact to performance. The study involved 245 privatized firms in 27 developing and 14 industrialized countries and the existence of political connections is based on whether the particular firms have a politician or an ex-politician on their boards. They find that the politically-connected firms exhibit a poor performance compared to their non-connected counterparts. The similar result also found in Fan et. al (2007). Meanwhile, Fisman (2001) in his study in Indonesia and Faccio (2006) in analysis of 47 countries find a significant relationship between these two variables. In the context of Malaysia where business and politics are inter-related (Gomez and Jomo, 1997) indicated that, participation of politicians in GLCs might have effects on firm value as they act as a link between the governments and companys management. Therefore, it is hypothesized that, H4: There is a significant relationship between politician as director and firm performance 4.5 Government officials as board member in GLCs and firm performance GLCs are created partly to implement government policy objectives especially those established as a result of privatization exercises in the early eighties. Hence, most of their board of directors are civil servants either still in-service or formal government officials that act as eyes and ear of government as well as communication bridge between the management and the government. Agrawal and Knoeber (2001) in their study found that the politically experience directors that comprises former government officials benefits the company they served and noted that they are more prevalent in firms compare to others outside directors. In a related study in Singapore that involved 25 GLCs and 204 non-GLCs for the period from 1990 to 2000, Ang and Ding (2006) found that GLCs exhibit higher valuations than those of the non-GLCs in the area of profitability, efficiency and firms financial performance. Like Malaysian GLCs, Singapore GLCs also comprises government officials in their board. At suc h, it is hypothesized that, H5: There is a significant relationship between in service government official as director and firm performance H6: There is a significant relationship between former government official as director and firm performance 5.0 Research design and methodology 5.1 Data and sample design The first model in this research is designed to examine the impact of ownership structure on corporate performance of all GLCs listed on the main board of Bursa Malaysia Securities for the period of five years (2004 until 2008). To ensure that the sample clearly represented the population intended for the research and to harmonious the selected sample to the GLCs definition, the sample selection is based on the following criteria: At any time, one specific GLICs either at federal or states government level must be the single largest shareholder with at least 20% share ownership in one particular company on Main Board of KLSE and; The financial and unit trust companies are excluded as they are governed by different set of rules and acts that could affect the end findings of this study. In addition, all required financial data for the study period are to be available in databases (Datastream or Thomson Research) and information on ownership and corporate governance structure from companies respective audited annual report. The study constructs an unbalanced panel data of all GLCs during the study period. This approach has the advantage of attrition biases in correlation (Hu and Izumida, 2008). The observations period of 2004 to 2008 is chosen mainly because the period was the phase of economic stability in Malaysia when the countrys economy and capitals market activities fully recovered after the Asian Financial Crisis. The performance chart in Figure 2 below reveals that prior to AFC, the Kuala Lumpur Composite Index (KLCI) in average has been trading in an upward trend. However, the AFC push down the KLCI to below 600 during the peak of the crisis. The post-crisis period has seen steady increase in the value of the KLCI even though until 2006 Bursa Malaysia Securities still has some 200 companies trading at more than 50 percent discount to their book values (James, 2006). Another reason for the chosen period is to evaluate the impact of GLCs Transformation Program that launch in May 2004 by Malaysian government to improve performance of GLCs. 5.2 Methodology 5.2.1 The proposed model The following base model will be used to test the hypotheses that have been defined in the previous section: PERFORM = ÃŽÂ ± + ÃŽÂ ²1FG_GLC + ÃŽÂ ²2SG_GLC + ÃŽÂ ²3GOLD + ÃŽÂ ²4GOV_OWN + ÃŽÂ ²5POL + ÃŽÂ ²6GO_BOD + ÃŽÂ ²7EX-GO_BOD + ÃŽÂ ²8LOG_SIZE + ÃŽÂ ²9LEV + ÃŽÂ ²10BOD_SIZE + ÃŽÂ ²11BOD_MEET + ÃŽÂ ²12BOD_IND + ÃŽÂ µi Where; PERFORM = the dependent variables: proxy by ROA, ROE and Tobins Q; Independent variables: FG_GLC = GLCs under federal government (equal to 1 if a firm is under federal government, and 0 otherwise) SG_GLC = GLCs under state government (equal to 1 if a firm is under states government, and 0 otherwise) GOLD = GLCs which government owned one golden share (equal to 1 if a firm has governments golden share, and 0 otherwise) GOV_OWN = captures the percentage of government ownership in a GLC POL = captures the percentage of politician on the board GO_BOD = captures the percentage of government official in-service on the board EX-GO_BOD = captures the percentage of ex-government official on the board Control variables: LOG_SIZE = natural log of total assets as proxy of firm size LEV = firm leverage (total liabilities to total assets) BOD_SIZE = number of board of directors during the year BOD_MEET = number of board of directors meetings during the year BOD_IND = captures the percentage of independent directors on the board ÃŽÂ µi = error term 5.2.2 Operationalization of variable selection 5.2.2.1 The dependent variable The dependent variable in this study is firm performance that comprises accounting and market based performance namely return on assets (ROA)  [8]  and Tobins Q. They are to be employed in this study to measure the impact of ownership structure on corporate performance. The accounting-based performance is the most common types of performance measurement in assessing business performance. In this approach, annual report, which comprises income statements, balance sheets and statements of changes in financial position are the source of information to analyze companys financial performance for one particular financial year. This approach is very important for companys stakeholders such as potential investors since the indicator can help them in making investment decisions. It also vital in helping the companys shareholders to assess how well the company performed in market place in order to make decisions on management and employees rewards, setting suitable plans to sustain the goo d momentum or even take drastic approaches for company to remain in business. The accounting-based performance also helps manager to effectively plan and control in order to achieve the objectives of the company. For example, according to Thompson Yeung (2001), return on equity as one of the accounting-based measurements can accommodate the effect of different accounting procedures across industries and can minimize the multi-linearity between companys specific characteristics such as size, age and profitability. Both ROA and ROE are the most common measurement used in analyzing financial performance of companies and have been used widely in previous studies (Vafeas,1999; Abdullah,2004; Bhagat Black, 2002; Rahman Haniffa 2006; Ang Ding, 2006; Bhagat Bolton; 2008 and Chu, 2009). Since accounting-based performance measures the past and current performance of the firm, m

First Generation Of Romantic Poets English Literature Essay

First Generation Of Romantic Poets English Literature Essay The Romantic Period encompassed poetic characteristics and visions completely different that anything seen before, rebelling and breaking away from the conservative style of Neoclassicism that preceded it. The first generation of Romantic poets mainly consisted of William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Blake. Characteristics of the period such as mysticism are seen and expressed in their poems. It isnt possible to place a definite date on the start and end of the Romantic Period as there are several conflicting opinions. Generally, it is regarded that the period began in 1798 with the publication of Lyrical Ballads by the forefathers of Romanticism; Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. Some scholars argue that it began as early as 1789 with Songs of Innocence by William Blake. In terms of its ending, some believe it ended with the start of the Victorian Era in 1837, although some say it died off by 1830. For the purpose of this essay, the consensus is that the period began in 1798 and ended in 1830. With a timeframe established, it is critical to look at historical events of the time as they played a major role in influencing the thoughts and styles of the Romantic poets. The Romantics were on the brink of the Industrial Revolution which was seen as a negative, horrendous thing. The poets emphasized on the importance of nature in life and society, seeing big, smoke expelling factories as monstrous and completely unnatural. They feared that society would become corrupted and evil as it lost contact with nature and further integrated to an industrialized life. The other main influence they had was the French Revolution which helps explain where some of the new ideologies and feelings came from. There was little to no expression of free speech in France and poverty was widespread. Resources were not distributed appropriately as the nobles lived in great luxury while lower classes starved. Naturally, the romantics supported the revolution hoping for social and political change and i mprovement in France. Later on, with Napoleons rule and aggressive conquests they turned against the French movement but kept and embraced the spirit of revolution. The revolution and their fear of being invaded made them truly appreciate what they had. Nature was turned to to escape from the real world and its predicaments; it was a heavenly gateway to peace of mind. Nature then became one of the most commonly used and important themes, references and characteristics in romantic poetry as it came to symbolize Gods pure creation of grace. The most important Romantic poets can be classified into two groups, the first generation and the second generation. The first generation of poets that created the basis for the later ones included were Samuel Coleridge (1772-1834), William Blake (1757-1827) and William Wordsworth (1770-1850) Charles Lamb (1775-1834), Jane Austen (17751817), and Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832). Charles Lamb is most famous for his poem The Old Familiar Faces and his essay Essays of Elia. At one point he was mentally ill and spent some time in a psychiatric hospital. His sister went insane and stabbed their mother to death, greatly affecting his writing for a long time and forcing him to take care of her. Jane Austen is most commonly known for her novels Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. Her novels were not accepted very well and didnt bring her much fame while she was alive, but now she has been accepted as one of the best authors of the English language. Northanger Abby was published once s he had passed away and sold excellently for a year. Sir Walter Scott is known for his poems like The Lady of The Lake and his ballads. He focused and showed an interest for Scottish history in his works. Scott was read all around the world during his time including readers in parts of Europe and North America. The most important second generation poets included Lord Byron (1788-1824), Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), and John Keats (1795-1821). All three produced important literary works despite that they died so young at the ages of 36, 30 and 26, respectively. Keats was the most famous of the three, praised for his collection of odes including Ode to a Nightingale. Like Austen, Keats was not widely recognized during his lifetime and then his works picked up popularity after he passed away. Shelley was a master of poetry who wrote Queen Mab as well as the dramatic plays The Cenci and Prometheus Unbound. He married the writer Mary Shelley who wrote the extremely famous novel Frankenstein and also helped edit and revise his works. Among Lord Byrons most popular poems are She Walks in Beauty and Don Juan. Lord Byron was somewhat of a wild man, getting involved in several romantic affairs and large debts. He fought for the Greeks in the Greek War of Independence which made him be seen as a n ational hero by them. Eventually he died from a terrible fever.

The Time Machine - Analysis :: essays research papers

There are numerous people in society who lack certain skills that they need for survival. These people may lack intelligence and depend on other human beings to help them get through life. However, most of the time, it is there fault that they lack these necessities. In â€Å"The Time Machine† by H.G Wells, the Eloi had this problem. They were victims of their own weaknesses because they didn’t understand that learning these important skills was necessary for them to survive. When he arrived in the future, The Time Traveller, after seeing and hearing the Eloi, concluded that they had an extremely low intelligence compared to the people that lived in his time. They were often described as and compared to little children. â€Å"Then one of them asked me a question that showed him to be on the intellectual level of one of our five year old children.†(39) He was very shocked about this weakness that the Eloi possessed. The fact that the Time Traveller lived 800,00 years in the past led him to believe that over time, the generations got less and less intelligent and more involved with having fun compared to the world where he lived. The Time Traveller also realized that the Eloi were very dependent on other people for many of there resources. He mentioned that the Eloi had houses and clothing but he didn’t see any machinery or anything that could possibly produce these items. â€Å"There were no shops, no workshops, no sign of importations among them.† (65) This led him the believe that there had to be someone or something that was making these items for them. Since the Time Traveller had already know about the low intelligence of the Eloi, this didn’t come as surprize to him. He was able to come to the conclusion that the Eloi cannot do very much for themselves. Another fact that the Time Traveler came across was that the Eloi spent all day playing games and doing nothing of importance. He didn't understand how they could get things done and survive in their world. "They spent all day of their time in playing gently, in bathing in the river, in making love in a half-playful fashion, in eating fruit and sleeping. I could not see how things were kept going." (65) He thought that the Eloi acted just like little children. The thing that puzzled him was how the society could function properly when no one took anything seriously. He never saw an Eloi doing work or anything of value. As a result, the Time Traveller didn't understand how the Eloi stayed alive.

Active Euthanasia is Murder Essay -- Euthanasia, Argumentative Essay

  Ã‚  Ã‚   "Euthanasia is not about the right to die. It's about the right to kill."-International Anti-Euthanasia Task Force  Ã‚  Ã‚   It seems impossible for me to claim I am anti-euthanasia or pro-euthanasia because there are two ways of participating in the process...active or passive.   After researching the topic, I have concluded that I cannot support active euthanasia because it seems to follow the same principle as homicide...one person killing another. I do not believe it is anyone's right to decide when, or how, a person's life should end. On the other hand, I cannot say I am totally against suicide or passive euthanasia. Although I do not condone suicide, I respect a person's right to decide between his personal life and death.   As far as passive euthanasia is concerned, I view it as part of suicide and think it is a concept that has been around for years but has gone unrecognized until recently.   Therefore, if I were to make a declaration of my view of euthan asia, it would simply be, "I am against active euthanasia...I am for passive euthanasia."    To understand why I feel such opposition on one topic, one must understand the proper definitions of "active" and "passive" euthanasia.   According to the International Anti-Euthanasia Task Force, assisted suicide, or passive euthanasia, involves "a non-suicidal person knowingly and intentionally providing the means or acts in some way to help a suicidal person kill himself or herself." On the other hand, active euthanasia occurs when "one person does something that directly kills another." To give an example, Dr. Kevorkian has conducted passive euthanasia on patients by supplying his patients with the means (lethal injections) to end their lives.   But, in 1999, Dr. Kevorkian pa... ... 13 December 2000.   http://www.death-dying.com/survey.html "The Rule of Double Effect." U.S. House Judiciary Committee.   24 June 1999.   5 December 2000.   http://www.house.gov/judiciary/hunt0624.htm   Rumbelow, Helen.   "Final agonies of the 'easy' death."   The Times.  Ã‚   Times Newspaper Limited.   24 February 2000.   29 August 2000.   http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/2000/02/24/timnwsnws01040.html Sobsey, Dick. "A Background Paper Prepared for the Premier's Council on The Status of Persons with Disabilities." 5 December 2000.   http://www.thalimide.ca/gwolbring/eau_def.html   "When Death is Sought." Task Force of Life and the Law.   5 December 2000.   http://www.health.state.ny.us/nysdoh/consumer/patient/preface.htm    Teachers Comments: The effort merits and A. Please see my notes in the essay concerning your   format citation problems.   

Drown Compare & contrast :: essays research papers

In this Paper I will compare and contrast the some of the relationships in "Everyday Use" by Alice Walker, to Drown by Junot Diaz. Dee and maggie are sister in "Everyday Use". Dee is outgoing and ambitious, Maggie is shy and lazy. Maggie envies Dee, but also fears her. They act more like co-workers than siblings. In the story they don't appear to interact with each other often, which makes it difficult to develop a relationship.From the story it doesn't illustrate them ever having a close connection probably due to Maggie's shyness and envy. Alice Walker writes "Maggie will be be nervous until after her sister goes: she will stand hopelessly in corners homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs, eyeing her sister with a mixture of envy and awe. She thinks her sister has held life always in the palm of one hand, that "no" is a word never learned to say to her." Dee(Wangero) is the most dominant one out of the two, which is no surprise since she tries take the quilts from Dee (Wangero). I found it I found it odd that she wanted those quilts because of her he ritage, when she completely disgraced her heritage when she traded her own name in for Wangero. Alice writes : "You know as well as me yhou was named after you aunt Dicie." I said. Dicie is my sister, She name Dee. We called her "Big Dee" after Dee was born. "But who was she named after?" asked Wangero. "I guess agter Grandma Dee," I said. "And who was she name after?" asked Wangero. "Her mother," I said, and saw Wangero was getting tired. "That's about as far back as I can trace it," I said. Though, in fact, I probably could have carried it back beyond the civil war through the branches. Her name had been passed down from generation to generation before Dee received it. Obviously the name had great importance in her family. Her mother could trace the name back to the civil war and connect it with specific people in her family. Alice Walker write's "you just don't understand," she said , as Maggie and I came out to the car. "what don't I understand?" I wanted to know. "Your heritage," she said".She criticize her mother about not understanding their heritage though, she places her heritage on those quilts instead of continuing the family name that was handed down to her.

Love or Fame: Which is More Important?

The issue regarding which is more important, love and family ties or fame and political power are issues that are always present in every generation. Well, which is really more important that we should devote our lives in search for the more important thing? Is blood really thicker than water? It is a subjective topic in which persons have different experiences and stand about the subject matter. This paper aims to answer this question by referring to three different epic plays: Oedipus the King and Antigone by Sophocles, and Aeneid by Virgil. It is also important to look at the values and actions displayed by the characters of the stories and to analyze whether they are still applicable in our contemporary time. In the story of Antigone, Haemon must choose between her love for Antigone and the fame and political power that await him if he obeys his father. Now Haemon is facing a dilemma because of the conflict between his love and his father. The same choice goes for Antigone for she wants to give her brother the honor of being buried in the right way. However, doing so would mean that she must disobey King Creon’s order. Disobeying the king does not only take the opportunity to be the princess by marrying the king’s son, Haemon, but her own life as well. But Antigone and Haemon decided to follow their hearts. In the end, Antigone killed herself. Knowing that his love is death, Haemon also decided to end his life. Thus, their value for their love ones cost them their own lives. However, they still gain the respect and sympathy of the people of Thebes. It can be said that the actions of Antigone and Haemon are not applicable in our present time. Although there are several movies that portray the same idea, this rarely happen in reality. It is a very rare case in which lovers decided to end their lives since it is impossible for them to be together. They can be considered as martyrs rather than heroes because of the act. Antigone also displays the kind of courage and determination that is greatly needed in our society today. Although she is a woman, she defies the odds and even the king for what she believes is right. Adding to the fact that she lives in the period when woman are considered inferior to man. This kind of courage is really needed by the present generation. Not only woman but men as well that have the courage to stand up and are willing to sacrifice their own lives in order to make a change. Today, although woman are accepted by our society and are ‘said’ to be equal to men, there are still some times that they are afraid to speak out and fight for their rights. Also both men and women are sometimes afraid to question some of the things that they find unjust in the society. They are afraid to face the consequences and are unwilling to make a change to improve social order. This characteristic is really needed in our society today, the courage to fight for what is right even if the whole society is against us. If only there are those like Antigone that are willing to give it all in order to make a change, I’m sure that our society will be a better place to live. On the other hand, King Creon cannot consider himself victorious. His persistence and determination to exercise his power over the people of Thebes had a considerably great cost. Not only had he lost the sympathy of the people of Thebes and the approval of the gods but the life of his son and wife as well. His authority blinded him and the result is loosing the persons that he values the most. If our present leaders will demonstrate the same reason and behavior like that of King Creon, the people will surely revolt and take their powers and authority away and give it to someone more deserving and just. The people will surely not tolerate such actions. In the Aeneid, Dido falls in love with Aeneas. They live together that makes Dido thinks that they are really husbands and wives. However, due to Aeneas vision of building a great city, he left Dido. Thus, Dido killed herself using Aeneas own sword. This action by Dido can also be considered as inappropriate in our time. Having that wealth and power is what everyone wants and throwing it all away together with your life is a very foolish thing to do. The same thing also goes for Aeneas, staying beside Dido ensures that a good future awaits him. No one would dare to exchange a wealthy living to a future that is unknown especially putting his or her own life on the line. But Aeneas is in search of greater glory and power. He pursues his desire to build a strong city. Indeed, he was able to build a great city and fulfill his destiny. He was a successful warrior, leader and founder and was able to fulfill a great vision. Still, things had not been easy for him. He also lost some of his love ones including his beloved wife and father. On the story of Oedipus, Oedipus chooses love over power. Although his known father Polybus is the King of Corinth, Oedipus decided to ran away from Corinth, sacrificing his title as the prince and the opportunity to be the future king. The fear of killing his father and marrying his mother had been the basis of his actions. In order to protect the people that he loves and to thwart the destiny that had been foretold about him, Oedipus lost everything that can be considered of great value, the easy and good life that he has in Corinth. In the end, he blinded himself and left Thebes without anything because of the words that he had given and as a punishment for all that he had done.   T oday, such punishment is not applicable and no one will also have the courage to do such thing. There are so many ways in which you can pay the wrong things that you had done and doing something like what Oedipus did is something unimaginable.   Death would be more acceptable than to suffer in the same way like Oedipus suffers. In the case of Queen Jocasta and King Creon, no one would abandon his or her child because of a prophecy. Abandoning a child at an early age is a very terrible thing to do. Yes there are times that we consult things like tarot reading, fortune telling an the likes in search for the answers to our questions about the future, but these visions are never considered as the primary basis of making decisions especially when life is involve. The respect given by the characters to the members of their family is also needed in the contemporary time. Today, youths are said to be losing respect especially to their parents whom they owe everything. Respect is a very important component of building a strong family ties. Also, respect for the authorities is needed in building a strong nation. Conflicts and wars arise because of the lost of respect to those who have the authority and to the right of every individual to live a peaceful life. In the three stories, those who value their family and love ones so much ended up in misfortune. The same thing goes for those who wanted to protect and achieve power. Thus, to search for love and for power both have negative consequences. To pursue love means to put your own life in the line and to face several hardships, to pursue power means to endanger the lives of the persons that you love and be left alone. Whether to choose love and family over fame and political power is really a big decision. You cannot have the best of both worlds. To pursue love means to let go of powers and fame and vise versa. Also we cannot really determine which is important, whether to choose love and family ties over fame and power depends upon the situation. What is important is that we do not only consider our own benefit in making the right decision. Also the stories show that to pursue love and power is not wrong, however living your life to attain just one of them is sure to cost you a lot. In making a decision we should both consider the heart and as well as the mind in order to come up with the right decision. Reference GradeSaver LLC,. (2007). The Aeneid. Retrieved December 8, 2007 from http://www.gradesaver.com/classicnotes/titles/aeneid/fullsumm.html GradeSaver LLC,. (2007). Oedipus the King. Retrieved December 8, 2007 from http://www.gradesaver.com/classicnotes/titles/oedipus/section3.html GradeSaver LLC,. (2007). Antigone. Retrieved December 8, 2007 from http://www.gradesaver.com/classicnotes/titles/antigone/section3.html         

Examine the role of women in Romeo and Juliet Essay

Shakespeare wrote the play Romeo and Juliet in the 16th century, a time in which the role of women was not to be a person in their own rights, but to be a wife to their husband and a mother to their children. Women had a specific place in society, and they were expected to conform to expectations of their positions. Women were owned by their husbands, and had little to no freedom from their spouses or parents. In the play, Shakespeare depicts this situation through the character Juliet and her relationships and role in society, a young girl growing into the expectations of women at that time. The theme of this essay is to examine the role of women in 16th century society i. e. Juliet, and contrast it to the role of women today. Juliet’s relationship with her parents is very different to what would be expected today. In the 16th century it was common for wealthy parents to employ a nurse to bring up their children, to be what a mother figure is like today. Juliet’s relationship is typical of the period in which the play was set: her affluent parents employed the Nurse (who had given birth at the same time as Lady Capulet) to care for their daughter when she was born, and â€Å"wean† her. A woman who had lost her own baby was an ideal source of milk for an upper-class infant whose mother preferred not to be troubled with doing her own nursing. This meant that Juliet had a stronger bond with her Nurse than with her biological mother, a customary situation in the Elizabethan era. However, this did not mean that the Nurse would have had any more say in Juliet’s upbringing than Capulet and Lady Capulet. Parents have a duty to make certain decisions for their children, as they did in the 16th century, however at that time a girl or women would barely ever make her own decisions, these would be made by her parents. In the play, Shakespeare places the character Juliet into a situation typical of the era: arranged marriage. At that time parents always chose a suitor for their daughter, regardless of her age or class. At this part in the play, Juliet’s mother enquires on her daughter’s â€Å"disposition to be married†. Here, Juliet behaves very uncharacteristically of the Elizabethan era, saying â€Å"It is an honour that I dream not of†, avoiding the proposal and demonstrating independent thinking. Lady Capulet has already made the decision for her daughter, and expects her to react dutifully as a daughter at that time would. Juliet says â€Å".. no more deep will I endart mine eye Than your consent to make it fly. † Now she appears to be a model daughter, however she still acts uncharacteristically because she has not given her mother a straight answer, again avoiding the subject. Arranged marriage still occurs today, but it is not as common as it was in the Elizabethan era, so although girls are still put into this position they are still expected to conform to tradition and obey their parents’ decision. Here Juliet seems to feel free to withhold her consent, which is definitely not customary of the 16th century. In the Elizabethan era, men had more power, opportunities and influence on society than women did. Women did not have equal rights and were seen as possessions not people. Just as a girl’s parents controlled her decisions and life, once the girl became and woman and was married, her husband controlled her. Husbands had expectations of their wife as much as parents had of their daughter; women were expected to behave accordingly, obeying their husbands. Their role as a wife would be to comply with their husband’s decisions and bear him a family. At this time, women knew no other way of life, and so generally women complied with the traditions, unlike today in which women are seen as equal citizens in society. In the play, Juliet was expected to marry Paris and become his possession, with no love involved. Juliet would have reacted normally to this idea, as many young women dreamed of the idea of love, and when proposed to, would create their own form of love for their husbands, usually respect. Many marriages were arranged by parents and were based on suitability, not love. Nowadays marriage is based on love alone, and parents have less influence over choosing a husband for their daughter. Lady Capulet’s role as a woman in the play is exactly what an upper class mother of that time would have been like. Lady Capulet was forced into marriage when still only young â€Å"And too soon marred are those so early made. † After giving birth to Juliet at a very young age, she chose to employ someone else to nurse her child, which was also usual of a woman of that status. In the Elizabethan era it was commonplace to have a Nurse bring up the child, as a mother would today. The character of the nurse would have been a recognizable type to Shakespeare’s audience. A woman who had lost her own baby was an ideal source of milk for an upper-class infant whose mother preferred not to be troubled with doing her own nursing. Babies were weaned by having a foul-tasting salve smeared on the nipple â€Å"laid wormwood to my dug†. The bodily intimacy between Juliet and the nurse creates a close motherly bond between them. The character of Juliet was not a typical 16th century girl, as although she was faced with the same situations as a girl of that time, she reacted differently and did not conform to the traditions and expectations made of her. Shakespeare chose not to make the character Juliet conform because his play was a dramatic tragedy, written to entertain audiences. Juliet would interest an Elizabethan audience to watch as she was uncharacteristic of that time, and she reacted differently to what was expected. Shakespeare chose to develop the female characters’ roles in the way he did so that the audience could relate and recognise these characters, making the play more interesting for them to watch. Bibliography   http://www. beyondbooks. com/sha91/5c. asp   http://www. wsu. edu:8080/~brians/love-in-the-arts/romeo. html   http://www. englishbiz. co. uk/mainguides/shakespeare. html   http://web. uvic. ca/shakespeare/Library/SLT/intro/introsubj. html.