We develop a model of internal governance where the self-serving actions of top management are limited by the potential reaction of subordinates. Internal governance can mitigate agency problems and ensure that firms have substantial value, even with little or no external governance by...

We examine deal-level data from 395 private equity transactions in Western Europe initiated by large private equity houses during the period 1991 to 2007. We un-lever the deal-level equity return and adjust for un-levered return to quoted peers to extract a measure of abnormal performance of the...

This study investigates whether business groups can harm the capital allocation efficiency of non-business group firms. From a sample of Korean firms (1987 to 2010), we compute an annual index of the collective strength and dominance of large business groups (LBG) per industry. We find that this...

We find that corporate giving represents a private benefit of control that distorts corporate investment and financing activity, consistent with free cash flow agency theory. Corporate giving discourages managers from pursuing external financing, especially debt issuance, to minimize outside...

We analyze dynamic trading by an activist investor who can expend costly effort to affect firm value. We obtain the equilibrium in closed form for a general activism technology, including both binary and continuous outcomes. Variation in parameters can produce either positive or negative...

This paper studies the long-term consequences of actions induced by vesting equity, a measure of short-term concerns. Vesting equity is positively associated with the probability of a firm repurchasing shares, the amount of shares repurchased, and the probability of the firm announcing a merger...

Exploiting the 2009 amendments to Regulation S-K, we provide unique evidence on the first-time disclosure of the reasons firms state for combining (separating) the roles of CEO and chairman. The stated reasons support both agency theory and organization theory. They are more numerous and...

We study the accounting and stock performance of 4,547 US acquisitions during 1989 and 2008. We categorise acquisitions into four types based on the four possible combinations of positive or negative abnormal stock performance and abnormal accounting performance. First, we compare the bidder,...

By means of an international sample of cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) involving firms with outstanding Eurobonds from the US, Europe, and other countries around the world, we show that bond performance around M&A announcements is sensitive to cross-country differences in creditor...

This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on the channels through which blockholders (large shareholders) engage in corporate governance. In classical models, blockholders exert governance through direct intervention in a firm's operations, otherwise known as “voice.” These...