Corporate governance has two types of agency issues with respect to ownership and control of firms. The Type I agency issue is related to conflict of interest between shareholders and firm’s managers (i.e., principal-agent conflict); whereas, the Type II agency issue (i.e., principal-principal conflict) is between controlling (majority) shareholders and minority shareholders. The tunneling and propping in business group firms are examples of Type II agency issue. Tunneling is the process of expropriation or transfer of business resources by controlling shareholders from low cash-flow rights (CFR) firms to high CFR firms in a business group. Tunneling is carried out through certain transactions at the cost of minority shareholders in group firms. Whereas, propping is the opposite process through which resources are provided by controlling shareholders to firms under financial distress in a business group. This thesis examines these Type II agency issues between controlling and minority shareholders of firms related to family business groups of Pakistan. A family business group is a combination of two, or more firms under the control of a particular family. In this regard, the study examines whether tunneling, or propping is carried out in family business group firms, how it occurs and what impact it has on minority shareholders of these firms? The thesis has three major parts: first, this study explores regulatory and corporate environments in Pakistan; develops the pyramid ownership structures of family business groups; and examines the cash flow leverage, cash-flow rights and voting (control) rights of ultimate owners in family business group firms. The study finds that corporations in Pakistan have high degree of ownership concentration. Controlling shareholders own about 87% of firms with equal to or greater than 10% shareholding and 60% of firms with equal to or greater than 20% shareholding. Moreover, most of the businesses in Pakistan are controlled by families. In 62% of business group firms, families own about 20% or more top shareholdings. The study also finds considerable difference in voting, and cash-flow rights in family business group firms, which provides incentives for expropriation of resources. Secondly, the thesis focuses on finding the empirical evidence of tunneling, or propping in family business groups firms of Pakistan by taking a sample of 326 non-financial firms listed on Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) for the period 2004-17. The study finds that majority or controlling shareholders expropriate minority shareholders by tunneling or transferring resources from group affiliated firms containing low CFR of majority owners. While measuring the sensitivities of firms to the industry earnings shocks through indirect methodology; the empirical results elucidate that about 31% resources are tunneled from low to high CFR group firms. The study further finds that equity held by directors (representing majority shareholders) has negative relationship with earnings of minority shareholders of low CFR group firms. Thirdly, the thesis examines different categories of four thousand five hundred Related Party Transactions (RPTs) taken place among sample firms during the period 2008-2013. Using the direct methodology, the study categorizes, classifies, describes and analyses the RPTs. The study finds that group affiliated firms extensively involve in RPTs as compared to non-group, foreign and state-owned firms. The controlling shareholders significantly use various RPTs for both, tunneling and propping depending upon the characteristics of firms, and corporate governance. Moreover, the study finds that considerable amount of intra-group loans is outstanding on firms’ financial statements. Besides, direct cash payments, cash receipts, assets sales and trade of goods & services have been observed as major RPTs, and sources of Type II agency issues. The study further finds that market assigns lower multiple of reported earnings for the top other receivable balance firms and vice versa. The study finally finds that firms are less likely to reduce their outstanding other receivables balances despite qualified audit opinions and lower returns. Overall, the results show that business interests of dispersed minority shareholders are xi significantly affected by crafty operations of majority shareholders in family business group firms mainly because of pyramid ownership structure and inadequate enforcement mechanism of corporate governance.These findings have certain implications for regulatory institutions, firm management, shareholders, and researchers.
ڈاکٹر عبدالجلیل فریدی افسوس ہے گذشتہ ماہ ڈاکٹر عبدالجلیل فریدی اکسٹھ برس کی عمر میں ہم سے جُدا ہوگئے۔ مرحوم ایک نہایت بلند مرتبہ اور ماہرِ فن ڈاکٹر کی حیثیت سے ریاست میں ہرجگہ معروف اور مشہور تھے ، لیکن عملی سیاسیات کے میدان میں گامزن ہوئے ابھی انھیں دس بارہ برس ہی ہوئے تھے،اس کے باوجود وہ اس شان اور کروفرکے ساتھ اپنی ریاست کے آسمان ِ سیاست پر نمودار ہوئے کہ پرانے چراغ جھلملا کے رہ گئے۔ ان کی سیاست اگر چہ اتر پردیش تک محدود رہی،لیکن ان کی غیر معمولی شخصیت کاوقار اوروزن پورے ملک کے مسلمانوں میں ہر جگہ محسوس کیا جاتا تھا۔اس کی وجہ یہ ہے کہ مرحوم جذبہ اورعمل دونوں کے انسان تھے، نہایت جری،بے باک اورصاف گوتھے۔ان کی سیاست شترگربگی یامنافقت کے عیب سے پاک وصاف تھی۔اورسب سے بڑھ کریہ کہ سیاست کوجلب منفعت کا ذریعہ بنانے کے بجائے انھوں نے چند در چند مالی نقصانات برداشت کیے اور اپنی کمائی کے لاکھوں روپئے اپنے کازپر بے دریغ خرچ کرڈالے۔اخلاق وعادات کے اعتبارسے بھی وہ بڑی خوبیوں کے مالک تھے ۔عقیدہ اورعمل میں پکے اورسچے مسلمان، ہمدرد ومتواضع، خوش اخلاق وخوش طبع تھے، اس بنا پر مخالفین بھی ان کاادب واحترام کرتے تھے۔ عارضۂ صدر میں مبتلاتھے، روس اور یورپ میں اعلیٰ سے اعلیٰ علاج کرایا مگرمرض نہ گیا۔ایک مرتبہ بڑی حسرت سے بولے : میں نے ڈاکٹر کی حیثیت میں تین لاکھ مریضوں کے ہاتھ دیکھے ہیں،لیکن آج خود اپنا ہاتھ دیکھتا ہوں توحسرت ہوتی ہے ۔آخر یہی مرض جان لیوا ثابت ہوا اوروہ خدا کو پیارے ہوگئے۔ا للّٰھمَّ اغفرلہ وارحمہ۔ [جون ۱۹۷۴ء]
Manuscript is a handwritten book. The writer of such book is known as "khattat". In the field of research editing and Makhtoota hold primary position. No research is possible without it. Editing is the farther goal than research. Therefore, being an expert in the manuscript is an obligatory factor for editing Manuscripts are the richest treasure of the human civilization, and their great contribution. They are the chronological records of past memories, incidents and circumstances. They need great expertise to understand these. A person who is not capable expert of manuscripts, he can’t carry out the research or editing task effectively.
Embedding of a digital watermark in a digital media is proving to be a workable solution for many of the recent problems like copyright protections and content authentication. However, the embedding of a digital watermark in a digital media is not without constraints. This requires perceptual shaping of a watermark in context of Human Visual System (HVS). The goal of this thesis is to develop a new watermarking scheme based on intelligent shaping of a digital watermark using GP. To achieve this goal, the research focuses on making efficient tradeoffs between two of the most important, but contradicting properties of a watermarking system; robustness and imperceptibility. This thesis makes the following contributions: (1) An analysis of the importance of perceptual shaping of a watermark in making a trade off between robustness and imperceptibility is performed, (2) intelligent search technique, like GP, is used to exploit the characteristics of HVS in evolving superior perceptual shaping functions, (3) the concept of bonus fitness has been proposed to implement multi-objective fitness function, in the GP simulation. This helps in simultaneously handling the estimated robustness and imperceptibility requirements during embedding stage, and actual robustness during decoding stage, (4) we realize that perceptual shaping of a watermark is not only important for making a superior trade off, but could also be used to tailor the watermark in accordance to an anticipated attack, (5) watermarking systems are becoming more and more sophisticated, as such this thesis, using intelligent search technique like GP, points towards the solution strategy of many complex issues in watermarking that are difficult to be computed analytically. A series of empirical investigations are performed to analyze the performance of the genetically evolved perceptual shaping functions (GPSFs) using standard benchmark, which shows the effectiveness of our approach.