This paper estimates the agency costs of controlling minority shareholders (CMSs), who have control of a firm's votes, while owning only a minority of the cash flow rights. Analyzing a panel of 309 listed Swedish firms during 1991 - 1997, for which we have complete and detailed data on ownership...

A hierarchically structured rent-seeking contest may be associated with lower equilibrium expenditure than a corresponding flat contest. In this chapter we discuss how this fact may be used to explain the structure of organizations such as firms, including why firms commonly have outside owners.

If contracting within the firm is incomplete, managers will expend resources on trying to appropriate a share of the surplus that is generated. We show that outside ownership may alleviate the deadweight losses associated with such costly distributional conflict, even if all it does is add...

We develop and test a nested logit model to examine how firms choose between a rights offering and a private equity placement. We find that family-controlled firms avoid issue methods that dilute control benefits or subject them to more monitoring, in particular when the family’s control...

This paper develops and tests a theory that explains the skewed distribution of the takeover gain heavily in favor of the target shareholders by considering the interacting effects of a concentrated target ownership structure; legal restrictions like the equal treatment principle and the...

The Mandatory Bid Rule (MBR) requires that any shareholder who either (i) establishes new control of a firm or (ii) takes over control by transfer of an old block position also extends an offer for the remaining shares at a fair price. For three different ownership structures, the paper analyzes...

A well-functioning market for corporate control is considered by the EC Commission as an important method for monitoring incumbent management and for improving the allocation of resources within Europe. This article examines the regulation of corporate acquisitions in Europe as well as inherent...

In this literature review, we propose a synthesising view on what constitutes a value-creating corporate board. The review scopes ten academic journals in a 31 year period and is thematic/analytical rather than quantitative. Our judgement of profundity and quality of ideational content is the...

In September 2006, the book Lysande ögonblick och finansiella kriser (Splendid Moments and Financial Crises) was published. In large part, it is a narrative about the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm during the 20th century: about actors, productions, attendance, relations to the audience,...