In the corporate finance tradition starting with Berle & Means (1923), corporations should generally be run so as to maximize shareholder value. The agency view of corporate social responsibility (CSR) generally considers CSR as a managerial agency problem and a waste of corporate resources,...

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...

We study wealth effects for a sample of 161 spin-offs from 15 different European countries that were announced between January 1987 and September 2000. The cumulative average abnormal return over the three-day event window is 2.35%. The mean abnormal return is 2.89% for companies that increase...

The paper investigates why the corporate landscapes of Germany and UK are so different in terms of control by analyzing ownership and control evolution in recent IPOs. We report the control evolution of a sample of size- and industry-matched German and UK companies six years subsequent to the...

This paper contributes to the comparative corporate governance literature by showing how cross-country differences in governance and legal standards affect the bondholder wealth effects of European merger and acquisitions (M&As).Using investment-grade Eurobonds, we find some remarkable...

Companies have the choice to deviate from their national corporate governance standards by opting into another system. They can do so via contractual devices – such as cross-border mergers and acquisitions, (re)incorporations, and cross-listings – which enable firms to choose their preferred...

We contrast the features of the German corporate governance system with those of other systems and discuss the recent regulatory initiatives.For example, the rules on insider trading and anti-trust have been strengthened.The Restructuring Act has been revised to prevent minority shareholders...

We examine how ownership structure affects the performance of firms using firm level data from a large emerging market, India.We specifically focus on a previously unexplored phenomenon, namely the differential role played by foreign institutional and foreign corporate shareholders.An...

This paper shows that a vibrant and economically important public-to-private market has reemerged in the US, UK and Continental Europe, since the second half of the 1990s.The paper shows recent trends and investigates the motives for public-to-private and LBO transactions.The reasons for the...

In this paper, we analyse the short-term wealth effects of large (intra)European takeover bids.We find large announcement effects of 9% for target firms and a cumulative abnormal return that includes the price run-up over the two-month period prior to the announcement date of 23%.However, the...