This study investigates the transition from being a listed company with a dispersed ownership structure to being a privately held company with a concentrated ownership structure. We consider a sample of private equity backed portfolio companies to evaluate the consequences of the corporate...

We are able to shed light on the black box of restructuring tools private equity investors use to improve the operational performance of their portfolio companies. By building on previous work considering performance evaluation of PE backed companies, we analyze whether private equity improves...

Are private equity investors able to reduce the overall costs of going public? This hypothesis was tested, for the Italian market, on a sample of 155 Ipos (54 Vb and 101 Nvb) during the period 1999-2007. For each company we estimated the direct and indirect costs of listing. The main results are...

This paper studies the economic logic and pricing of secondary buyouts, a form of leveraged buyout that has become increasingly popular. I investigate three potential explanations for secondary buyouts: efficiency gains, liquidity-based market timing, and collusion. The results are most...

Using fund-, firm- and bank-level data we investigate the investments of private equity (PE) funds in the north-western regions of Italy. Both the private equity fund managers and the PE investments are heavily concentrated in this most developed area of the country. The average size of the...

In this study we examine how Specified Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) were used as a financing tool for companies in the shipping industry in period 2004-2011. We confirm that SPACs focused on acquisitions in the shipping industry have similar characteristics as the population of SPACs...

Using linked employer-employee data from Sweden, a difference-in-difference approach, and 201 private equity buyouts undertaken between 1998 and 2004, we show that unemployment risk declines and labor income increases for employees in the wake of a private equity buyout. Unemployment risk...

We test under what circumstances boards discipline managers and whether such interventions improve performance. We exploit exogenous variation due to the staggered adoption of corporate governance laws in formerly communist countries coupled with detailed “hard” information about the...

We test under what circumstances boards discipline managers and whether such interventions improve performance. We exploit exogenous variation due to the staggered adoption of corporate governance laws in formerly Communist countries coupled with detailed ‘hard’ information about the...

This study documents the changes in the corporate design of modern Specified Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) for the years 2003–2012. Do institutional characteristics of SPACs determine the success of their merger outcomes? The paper finds that SPACs significantly redesigned their...