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 examine shareholder wealth effects in a heterogeneous sample of 115 European leveraged going private transactions from 1997 to 2005. Average abnormal returns as reaction to the LBO announcement amount to 24.20%. In cross-sectional regressions, we find that these value gains can largely be...