As institutional investors are the largest shareholders in most listed UK firms, one expects them to monitor the firms they invest in. However, there is mounting empirical evidence which suggests that they do not perform any monitoring. This paper provides a new test on whether UK institutional...

The paper investigates why the corporate landscapes of Germany and UK are so different in terms of control by analyzing ownership and control evolution in recent IPOs. We report the control evolution of a sample of size- and industry-matched German and UK companies six years subsequent to the...

This paper investigates whether investment spending of firms is sensitive to the availability of internal funds.Imperfect capital markets create a hierarchy for the different sources of funds such that investment and financial decisions are not independent.The relation between corporate...

Companies have the choice to deviate from their national corporate governance standards by opting into another system. They can do so via contractual devices – such as cross-border mergers and acquisitions, (re)incorporations, and cross-listings – which enable firms to choose their preferred...

We contrast the features of the German corporate governance system with those of other systems and discuss the recent regulatory initiatives.For example, the rules on insider trading and anti-trust have been strengthened.The Restructuring Act has been revised to prevent minority shareholders...

This paper examines the impact of venture-capital backing of UK companies issuing shares at flotation on the characteristics of the lock-in agreements entered into by the existing shareholders, and on the abnormal returns realised around the expiry of the directors' lock-in agreements.The study...

In this paper, we analyse the short-term wealth effects of large (intra)European takeover bids.We find large announcement effects of 9% for target firms and a cumulative abnormal return that includes the price run-up over the two-month period prior to the announcement date of 23%.However, the...

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the dividend policy of German firms is more flexible than the one of their Anglo-American counterparts.This paper analyses the decision to change the dividend for a panel of 221 German firms from 1984 to 1994.The choice of the period of study is motivated by the...

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...

We analyse the characteristics of lockup agreements of IPOs on the Neuer Markt and the Nouveau Marche from 1996 to 2000.Even though both markets were part of the same EuroNM network, the characteristics of their lockup agreements are substantially different.Firm characteristics have a major...