For the 5th takeover wave, European M&As were expected to create significant takeover value: the announcement reactions were strongly positive for target shareholders (more than 35%) and the bidding shareholders also expected to gain a small though significant increase in market value of...

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...

We investigate patterns of abnormal stock performance around insider trades and option exercises on the Dutch market. Listed firms in the Netherlands have a long tradition of employing many anti-shareholder mechanisms limiting shareholders rights. Our results imply that insider transactions are...

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....

In cross-border acquisitions, the differences between the bidder and target corporate governance have an important impact on the takeover returns. Our country-level corporate governance indices capture the changes in the quality of the national corporate governance regulations over the past 15...

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 provides an overview of existing research on how corporate restructuring affects the wealth of creditors.Restructuring is defined as any transaction that affects the firm's underlying capital structure.Thus, it reaches well beyond asset restructuring and includes transactions such as...

The paper investigates the incentive effects of performance-vested stock options (PVSOs) in aligning management interests with shareholder wealth. Performance targets attached to option vesting would prevent executives from receiving rewards from outcomes that are unaffected by their effort.Such...