Is There a Favoritism Strategy in Taiwan Mutual-Fund Companies? Evidence from Taiwan Domestic-Equity Funds

This paper investigates whether Taiwan mutual-fund companies actively pursue a corporate-level strategy of enhancing the performance of "high-value" funds (i.e., high fee-ratio funds or high past performers) at the expense of other "low-value" funds belonging to the same companies. The results show a significant difference between high- and low-value funds within the same fund families and that this difference favors the high past-performing funds. The future incremental cash inflows from these high-value funds indicate that fund companies indeed benefit from the subsidized strategy. Our findings highlight the potential for agency problems and the importance of corporate and fund governance in the Taiwan asset-management industry.