Around the world (with the U.S. and U.K. as exceptions) concentrated ownership structures and controlling shareholders are predominant even among listed firms. We provide novel empirical evidence how such controlling shareholders, in particular founding families, affect payout policy decisions....

This study re-examines the impact of asset maturity on debt maturity choices. The pertinent literature suffers from the fact that asset maturity typically is hard to observe. In this paper we exploit the fact that for energy utilities asset maturity can directly be measured. Using a sample of...

The paper analyzes debt and equity capital market instruments with respect to their suitability for family firms. It highlights and evaluates different aspects in the decision process of family firms regarding the use of capital market financing. The results are based on a qualitative analysis...

Family firms are an important phenomenon of the German capital market. We analyse the broadest market segment of the German Stock Exchange, the CDAX, for the years 1998 to 2008. According to a founding-family definition almost half of all CDAX-listed non-financial firms in Germany can be...

Tax codes regularly create conflicts of interests between small and large shareholders with respect to the payout decision of firms. We use this fact to study (i) whether firm behavior reflects preferences of blockholders and (ii) the effectiveness of minority shareholder protection on...

This paper examines the impact of SOX on the total cost and the component cost of going public. First, we document a statistically significant increase in non-underwriting expenses of 0.8 percentage points after the introduction of SOX, which is mostly due to an increase in accounting and legal...

This paper analyzes how founders and their families influence R&D intensity. Information on R&D comes from a large-scale, bi-annual survey among listed German firms. We find that R&D intensity is higher in firms that are actively managed by the family. The impact of family control (via voting...

This paper examines the impact of SOX on the total cost and the component cost of going public. First, we document a statistically significant increase in non-underwriting expenses of 0.8 percentage points after the introduction of SOX, which is mostly due to an increase in accounting and legal...

This paper examines the impact of SOX on the total cost and the component cost of going public. First, we document a statistically significant increase in non-underwriting expenses of 0.8 percentage points after the introduction of SOX, which is mostly due to an increase in accounting and legal...

This study examines how family firm characteristics affect capital structure decisions. In our analysis we disentangle the influence of three distinct components of a family firm: ownership, supervisory and management board activities by the founding family. Thereby, we use a unique panel...