We examine shareholder wealth effects in a heterogeneous sample of 115 European leveraged going private transactions from 1997 to 2005. Average abnormal returns as reaction to the LBO announcement amount to 24.20%. In cross-sectional regressions, we find that these value gains can largely be...

German firms pay out a lower proportion of their cash flows, but a higher proportion of their published profits than UK and US firms. We estimate partial adjustment models and report two major findings. First, German firms base their dividend decisions on cash flows rather than published...

Using a hand collected data set of 122 buy-outs, this paper presents the first analysis of the impact effects of public to private transactions in the UK during a period (1998-2004) in which PTPs have become a significant part of the market for corporate control. We find that performance...

This paper investigates the impact on corporate performance of UK firms from adopting the Cadbury Committee's Code of Best Practice. The findings show improved corporate performance for companies adopting the code. Regarding the specific recommendations of the Code, splitting the positions of...

Using panel data on 275 German exchange-listed companies I examine the relationship between founding-family ownership and firm performance. My results show that family firms are not only more profitable than widely-held firms but also outperform companies with other types of blockholders....

The paper investigates the factors that influence the decision to change the status of a publicly quoted company to that of a private company. We find that firms that go private are more likely to have higher CEO ownership and higher institutional ownership. In relation to their board...

This paper investigates how far UK public to private transactions can be explained by financial distress costs or incentive realignment. We find that firms going private are more likely to be smaller, more diversified, younger and have lower Q ratios than firms remaining public. The results...