Corporate governance and the cost of capital of the companies listed in the Stock Exchange of Thailand

Abstract

This thesis investigates the relationship between corporate governance and cost of capital of the companies listed in the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) during 2000-2007. This study uses corporate governance index (CGI) which capture major aspects of corporate governance that are board structure, conflict of interest, board responsibility, shareholder rights, and disclosure and transparency. The cost of debt is estimated by predicting the credit rating which estimated by Altman model, Blume model, Campbell model, Shumway model and Zmijewski model and being converted in to the cost of debt by using the yield spread technique. The cost of equity calculated from CAPM, three-factor model, DDM and Easton model. After ignoring invalid model namely CAPM and DDM, the regression result shows a negative relationship between corporate governance, the cost of debt, the cost of equity and the cost of capital. The result can be interpreted that corporate governance can reduce the cost of capital