We analyse the motives and market valuation of various forms of stock market delisting. We show that firms that delist voluntarily are likely to have come to the market to rebalance their leverage rather than to finance their growth opportunities. During their public life, their leverage...

We analyse the strategies undertaken by financially-distressed companies and test the hypothesis that the probability of corporate recovery is positively related to the adoption of cash based strategies. We show that, companies that recover from financial distress are focused, diligent and adopt...

We test the impact of taxes and governance systems on dividend payouts across countries. We show that, unlike previous studies, firms in strong investor protection countries pay lower cash dividends than in weak protection countries when the classical tax system is implemented, but they...

This paper examines whether the increased legal and reputational constraints associated with cross-listing in the U.S. reduces the propensity of insiders to trade on private information. We find that the directors in both domestic and cross-listed firms trade on private information, particularly...

This paper contrasts the costs and benefits of leasing, rather than owning real estate assets. Consistent with the financing and agency costs hypotheses, I find that large and high growth companies are likely to lease than to own real estate. The results also indicate that leasing companies are...

In this paper we analyse the short-term stock price behaviour following a period of large stock price changes. We compare the price behaviour of A shares owned by domestic investors and B shares owned by foreign investors in the two Chinese markets, Shanghai and Shenzhen. We find significant...

The purpose of the paper is to analyse the tax systems and tax reforms in France, Germany, Italy and UK and test the hypothesis that ex-day returns are related to each country's tax differential between dividends and capital gains. Consistent with the tax hypothesis, the results indicate that in...

The issue of the separation of the roles of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Chairman of the Board (COB) has been at the centre stage of various corporate governance guidelines. While in the US, these roles are typically combined, in the UK companies are advised to split them following the...

We provide a cross-country evidence on the impact of corporate and personal income taxes, and corporate governance systems on debt maturity structures and leverage using a comprehensive sample of 212,642 firm-year observations based on a sample of 19,573 firms from 24 OECD countries over the...