This study examines how family firm characteristics affect capital structure decisions. In our analysis we disentangle the influence of three distinct components of a family firm: ownership, supervisory and management board activities by the founding family. Thereby, we use a unique panel...

While in the US stock-based incentives are commonly used since the 50s of the last century, in Germany they were invented only some ten years ago. Even in 1996 firms faced considerable regulatory difficulties when willing to grant such incentives. In the meantime the legal environment has...

We analyse to what extent the accrual anomaly is related to the choice of the accounting system as well as firm-level heterogeneity in corporate governance mechanisms. Using a unique dataset of listed German firms over the period 1995 to 2005 we first corroborate former results indicating that...

Around the world (with the U.S. and U.K. as exceptions) concentrated ownership structures and controlling shareholders are predominant even among listed firms. We provide novel empirical evidence how such controlling shareholders, in particular founding families, affect payout policy decisions....

This paper focuses on the decision to go public when both seller and potential buyers have private benefits of control. The basic model by Zingales (1995) is extended to account for uncertainty of private benefits. This leads to new implications for the sales process, ownership structure,...

In January 2010 the Deutsche Börse Group introduced two family firm stock indices. Both indices are calculated as price and performance indices and extend the number of investment strategy indices of Deutsche Börse Group. The DAXplus Family is an all-share index whereas the DAXplus Family 30...

This paper extends research in the field of private equity investments in family firms. It contributes to the literature by fundamentally analyzing the decision criteria of family firm owners for using minority investments of private equity investors. This type of financing might be of great...

This paper investigates the wealth effects of private equity (PE) investor purchases of shares in German quoted companies. It is the first study to analyze these effects for the German market which is particularly interesting due to its distinct characteristics with regard to the ownership...

We apply control rights theory to explain the structure and determinants of financial covenants in private equity backed leveraged buyouts. We analyze 130 German transactions from 2000 to 2008, covering about 40 percent of the LBO market during this period. We consider Germany to be a superior...

Recent research indicates that the majority of listed firms in Germany (and also in many other countries around the world) have a dominant owner rather than being widely-held. Hence, owner-dominated firms comprise an important subset of listed companies. This article introduces the concept of an...