We examine how risk taking and firm value are related to board independence and financial expertise for a broad sample of U.S. financial institutions during the 2001 to 2008 period. Market-based measures of risk are negatively related to the percent of independent directors, while market-based...

On March 21, 2007, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted Exchange Act Rule 12h-6 which makes it easier for foreign private issuers to deregister and terminate the reporting obligations associated with a listing on a major U.S. exchange. We examine the characteristics of 59 firms...

We find that the announcement gain to target shareholders from acquisitions is significantly lower if a private firm instead of a public firm makes the acquisition. Non-operating firms like private equity funds make the majority of private bidder acquisitions. On average, target shareholders...

From 1988 to 2003, the average change in managerial ownership is significantly negative every year for American firms. We find that managers are more likely to significantly decrease their ownership when their firms are performing well, but not more likely to increase their ownership when their...

We study the determinants and consequences of cross-listings on the New York and London stock exchanges from 1990 to 2005. This investigation enables us to evaluate the relative benefits of New York and London exchange listings and to assess whether these relative benefits have changed over...

Firms conduct SEOs to resolve a near-term liquidity squeeze, and not primarily to exploit market timing opportunities. Without the SEO proceeds, 62.6% of issuers would have insufficient cash to implement their chosen operating and non-SEO financing decisions the year after the SEO. Although the...

We examine the determinants of appointments of outside CEOs to boards and how these appointments impact the appointing companies. We find that CEOs are most likely to join boards of large established firms that are geographically close, pursue similar financial and investment policies, and have...

Using hedge fund indices representing eight different styles, we find strong evidence of contagion within the hedge fund sector: controlling for a number of risk factors, the average probability that a hedge fund style index has extreme poor performance (lower 10% tail) increases from 2% to 21%...

Using a unique dataset from a well-known survey on derivatives use, this paper examines several questions about the use of derivatives to “take a view” on interest-rate and currency movements. Tests of what motivates firms to take a view suggest that firms view speculation as a profitable...

In this paper, we test two competing explanations for the increasing use of securitization by financial institutions. First, by reducing financial distress costs, securitization lowers the cost of debt finance, particularly for risky and highly levered companies. Second, regulatory distortions...