During times of distress, companies are compelled to reassess operational policies and reengineer strategic formulations to discern value maximising uses for limited resources. The executive’s agility to react to financial distress determines the probability of bankruptcy. Proper governance...

This survey provides a synthetic and evaluative survey of issues in corporate financial distress and bankruptcy. This area has moved into a public domain as a result of the recent global financial crisis that witnessed failures of many venerable institutions that got rescued by the government....

The validity of the use of financial statements as a source of information for detecting financial distress is questionable because of the opportunistic behaviour of the company’s management. This study aims to analyse the effect of accrual earnings management, real earnings management, and...

The main factors influencing the probability of bankruptcy are analyzed on Czech Republic 1993-1999 firm data. Basic models of the bankruptcy are compared: neoclassical, financial and corporate governance. The corporate governance hypothesis does not receive support in the ownership but the...

This study provides new stylized facts on the determinants of corporate failure and acquisition in Germany. It also offers important lessons for the design of empirical studies. We show that firms experiencing failure or acquisition are significantly different from surviving firms on a number of...

This study investigates the determinants of changes in corporate ownership and firm failure, taking into account different types of sellers and buyers of control blocks. For a large panel of German corporations we find that firms are more likely to fail or to be sold when performance is poor,...

In this study we empirically investigate the effect of financial distress on cor-porate ownership and control. Our analysis is based on a panel of 267 Germanfirms that suffered from repeated interest coverage shortfalls and steep share pricedeclines between 1996 and 2004. We track each firm's...

This study provides new stylized facts on the determinants of corporate failure and acquisition in Germany. It also offers important lessons for the design of empirical studies. We show that firms experiencing failure or acquisition are significantly different from surviving firms on a number of...

The financial crisis brought to light weakness in the assessments of risks and vulnerabilities in banks. Consequently, an insight into how the ownership structure of a bank affects investment decisions, performance and ultimately insolvency risk - the focus of this paper - is crucial. Our...

Core institutions of UK corporate governance, in particular those relating to takeovers, board structure and directors' duties, are strongly orientated towards a norm of shareholder primacy. Beyond the core, in particular at the intersection of insolvency and employment law, stakeholder...