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...

In this paper we introduce a framework to analyze the key drivers of value creation of private equity in financial institutions and the bank holding sub-segment. We estimate the influence of market-timing, take specifications of this highly regulated industry into account, and approximate the...

Structure and stability of private equity market risk are still nearly unknown, since market prices are mostly unobservable for this asset class. This paper aims to fill this gap by analyzing market risks of listed private equity vehicles. We show that aggregate market risk varies strongly over...

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 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...

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....

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...

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 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...