In Belgian corporate groups, complex pyramidal structures and interlocking ownership lead to separation of ownership and control. This may generate incentives for the controlling shareholder to divert resources within the group through intragroup equity sales. This in turn could lead to...

Holding companies, which play an important role in corporate finance in Belgium and in other Continental European countries, often trade at a discount to their estimated net asset value (NAV). First, we discuss possible explanations for this discount: holding company destroys value, NAV...

We investigate whether a firm’s disclosure policy is affected by the changing corporate setting and intensified corporate governance associated with private equity (PE) investments. For a unique sample of unquoted PE backed firms we observe a significant switch to increased financial...

timeliness of financial reporting in Belgium. The analysis is based on a sample of 1892 non-financial Belgian companies for 1996. The contribution of this paper is to investigate how external financing affects the timeliness of financial reporting of closely held companies in continental Europe....

This paper examines the quality of financial statements reported by private equity (PE) backed companies in the years around the initial PE investment. We study both pre- and postinvestment earnings characteristics of a unique hand-collected sample of 556 Belgian unlisted companies, receiving PE...

We analyze the impact of bank relationships on the performance of Belgian firms listed on the Brussels stock exchange at the start of the Great Depression, in 1929–1931. Most of these firms were affiliated with one or more banks via interlocking directorships. Taking into account the number of...

This study investigates cash policies of multinational corporations (MNCs) for a large sample of European MNCs and their subsidiaries in the period 1998-2004. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that cash holdings depend on a trade-off between the superior knowledge of the subsidiary...

We investigate the impact of universal banks on the performance and the risk of affiliated companies in an unregulated environment with booming financial markets. For a unique sample of 129 Belgian companies listed in the period 1905-1909, we find that universal bank affiliation had a positive...