Disclosure environment and listing on foreign stock exchanges

The benefits of listing a company's stock on a foreign exchange to achieve better global market integration have been quite extensively examined. What has been overlooked in the finance literature is an attempt to explain why the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) tends to be bypassed in favor of the London market and other exchanges when firms select foreign exchanges for listing. This paper explains the behavior of firms in their selection of foreign stock markets for listing by using a signalling model. Another purpose of this study is to address the current dispute between the NYSE and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding the desire of the NYSE to relax its registration requirements in order to gain more listings by foreign companies.