Corporate boards, monitoring and securities class actions: a pitch

The purpose of this paper is to apply Faff’s (2015) pitch template to a regulatory financial accounting research topic. The author describes her personal reflections on completing the pitch template for this project by investigating corporate boards, monitoring and securities class actions (SCAs) in Australia. The author builds on prior research in this area (Chapple et al., 2014). This study is set within prior literature examining capital markets, corporate governance, continuous disclosure regime and regulatory changes. The market reaction to corporate board changes pre- and post-SCAs is the focus of the examination within the pitch template. The pitch letter contributes to prior literature, as it demonstrates a team with established researchers using the pitch template, while prior papers have documented PhD student usage of the pitch template.

The author uses the Faff (2015) pitch template to focus the research team’s ideas into a concisely focused research idea. An earlier version of this pitch was presented at the Centre for International Finance and Regulation Pitching Research Symposium on 29 May 2015 in Sydney to a panel of distinguished professors and participants from market regulators including the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, Reserve Bank of Australia, Australian Prudential Regulation Authority and the financial sector including Colonial First State.

It was found that there are benefits to using the pitch template for both established and emerging researchers. Prior pitch papers have primarily been authored by PhD students. This paper’s aim was to provide evidence that established as well as emerging scholars can benefit from completing the Faff pitch template.

This pitch letter contributes to the research community, as it shows the process and personal reflections on undertaking the pitch exercise by a team including established and emerging researchers. Within this pitch letter there is a documentation of how the research team for the underlying project was formed and the prior experiences of the team.