This paper analyses the control of Belgian listed companies.The analysis reveals that control of listed companies in Belgium is highly concentrated . Business groups, holding companies, and voting pacts, play an important role in bringing about this concentration.The main characteristics of the...

The paper investigates why the corporate landscapes of Germany and UK are so different in terms of control by analyzing ownership 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 flotation. The...

Traditionally share price returns and their variance have been explained by factors linked to the operations of the company such as systematic risk, corporate size and P/E ratios or by factors related to the influence of the macro-economic environment. In these models, the institutional...

This paper has described two broad systems of corporate governance existing in Continental Europe and in the UK.

The first striking feature is that ownership of the average UK company is diffuse: a coalition of at least eight shareholders is required to reach an absolute majority of voting rights. Even though the average firm has a dispersed ownership, the reader should bear in mind that there are about...

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...

This paper examines the payout policies of UK firms listed on the London Stock Exchange during the 1990s.It complements the existing literature by analyzing the trends in both dividends and total payouts (including share repurchases).In a dynamic panel data regression setting, we relate target...

Abstract: This paper presents the main reasons why public-private partnerships (PPPs) are adopted as well as the possible disadvantages for the public and private sectors. By means of two case studies on bridge construction and railway infrastructure (Fertagus and Lusoponte), we elucidate how a...

Abstract: Little is known about how different bonus schemes affect traders’ propensity to trade and which bonus schemes improve traders’ performance. We study the effects of linear versus threshold (convex) bonus schemes on traders’ behavior. Traders purchase and sell shares in an...