While empirical studies that use event-study methodology find on average that the gains from mergers and acquisitions are positive, those focusing on accounting figures tend to find a significant drop in performance. We argue that each of the four possible combinations between positive or...

While empirical studies that use event-study methodology find on average that the gains from mergers and acquisitions are positive, those focusing on accounting figures tend to find a significant drop in performance. We argue that each of the four possible combinations between positive or...

We examine the link between age diversity on boards of directors and corporate misconduct. We find firms with age-diverse boards to be associated with significantly less corporate misconduct – both in terms of the number of violations and the fines paid. This finding is robust to various...

Regulations in the pre-Sarbanes-Oxley era allowed corporate insiders considerable flexibility in timing their trades and engaging in stealth trading, e.g., by executing several trades and reporting them jointly after the last trade. We document that even these lax reporting requirements were...

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 address the question of whether hedge fund and private equity investments in public firms are motivated by corporate governance improvements. As opposed to traditional financial investors both HF and PE are likely to have the incentives to alleviate agency conflicts. However, against the...

This paper reconsiders the issue of share price reactions to dividend announcements. Previous papers rely almost exclusively on a naive dividend model in which the dividend change is used as a proxy for the dividend surprise. We use the difference between the actual dividend and the analyst...

This article looks into the development of cross-ownership of capital and of management networks in the capital market on the basis of the 150 biggest listed companies in the period 1998/2006. Owing to various institutional changes in the period under review (especially the adoption of the 2000...

This paper reconsiders the issue of share price reactions to dividend announcements. Previous papers rely almost exclusively on a naive dividend model in which the dividend change is used as a proxy for the dividend surprise. We use the difference between the actual dividend and the analyst...

This study documents a positive, economically meaningful impact of executives' general managerial skills on shareholder value. Examining 171 sudden executive deaths over thirty years, we find that a one-standard-deviation increase in the general ability index corresponds to at least a 1.5...