기업지배구조를 고려한 ESG 위원회와 신용등급간의 관련성

초록

[Purpose] Since ESG committees are established as sub－specialized committees within the board of directors, it is likely that ownership structure has a compounding effect on ESG committees(Bolourian et al., 2021). Therefore, in this study, we consider the ownership structure of the firm, such as the presence of owner－managers and foreign ownership, to identify the effect of ESG committees on credit ratings. [Methodology] This study conducts OLS regressions between ESG committees and credit ratings for a maximum of 758 firm－years of December year－end firms in the KOSPI and KOSDAQ markets from 2016 to 2020, excluding financial firms and after removing missing observations for each model. [Findings] We test our hypothesis and find that the establishment of ESG committees is associated with higher bond ratings in owner－managed firms. Next, we find that the effect of having an ESG committee on higher credit ratings is more pronounced for firms with high foreign ownership. We further analyze ESG committee independence (ESG_ind) and activeness (ESG_freq) as variables of interest, and find that ESG committee independence and activeness have a positive impact on credit ratings only for owner－managed firms. In addition, when considering foreign investor ownership, ESG committee activity has a significantly positive impact on ratings. When ESG committees were analyzed in two categories (active vs. passive), the effect of ESG committees on ratings was more pronounced for owner－managed companies and companies with higher foreign ownership, respectively. Finally, we found that the younger the age of managers, the more positive the impact of ESG committees on ratings. [Implications] This study contributes to the expansion of existing ESG literature by empirically analyzing the effect of introducing ESG committees on the cost of debt capital in the capital market. In addition, we consider the ownership structure of the firm, whether it is owner－managed or not, and foreign ownership. Furthermore, this study is more meaningful as it confirms that ESG committees established within the board of directors have a mutual influence on decision－making, not only through the single governance structure of the board of directors, but also through multiple governance structures that include the influence of other governance structures.

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