This paper reviews the vast academic literature on the market for corporate control.Our main focus is the cyclical wave pattern this market exhibits.From the perspective of takeover waves, we address questions such as: Why do mergers and acquisitions (M&As) occur?Does the ensuing transfer of...

Traditionally share price returns and their variance have been explained by factors linked to the operations of the company such as systematic risk, corporate size and P/E ratios or by factors related to the influence of the macro-economic environment. In these models, the institutional...

This paper investigates the effects of international diversification of banks on the value of their M&A advice. We study bidder returns to 1,253 cross-border M&A announcements. We find that acquirers engaging a more internationally diversified financial advisor generate lower excess returns....

As institutional investors are the largest shareholders in most listed UK firms, one expects them to monitor the firms they invest in. However, there is mounting empirical evidence which suggests that they do not perform any monitoring. This paper provides a new test on whether UK institutional...

Abstract: Central banks in fluence financial markets' expectations of its future policy. By providing its stance on the prospects of the economy, rationalizing past decisions or announcing future actions, central banks affect financial markets' forecasts. In bad times monetary policy...

In this paper, we employ a registry of legal insider trading for Dutch listed firms to investigate the information content of trades by corporate insiders. Using a standard event-study methodology, we examine short-term stock price behavior around trades. We find that purchases are followed by...

Two important characteristics of current European equity markets are rooted in changes in financial regulation (the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive). The regulation (i) allows new trading venues to emerge, generating a fragmented market place and (ii) allows for a substantial fraction...

This paper examines the effect of temporarily suspending the trading of exchange-listed individual stocks.We evaluate whether the regulatory authorities can successfully use the mechanism of trading halts in forcing companies to disclose new and material information to the capital market.In...

This paper analyzes convertible bond arbitrage on the Canadian market for the period 1998 to 2004.Convertible bond arbitrage is the combination of a long position in convertible bonds and a short position in the underlying stocks. Convertible arbitrage has been one of the most successful...