This paper analyzes the governance and performance of firms which, according to simplistic agency theory, should not be viable. These firms are fully or partially owned by a foundation which itself is not owned by natural or legal persons. Therefore, residual claimholders have restricted or no...

We investigate real investment, financial revenues and profits in formerly domestic firms once they enter a multinational entity (MNE) through an acquisition. We argue that following the acquisition, those targets are tax-optimized in a profit shifting context if they are acquired by MNEs with...

This paper is concerned with tax-planning strategies of multinational corporations. A theoretical analysis discusses the choice of the capital structure in a setting where intercompany loans can be used to shift profits to low-tax countries. Empirical evidence is provided using micro-level panel...

Multinational companies can exploit the tax advantage of debt more aggressively than national companies by shifting debt from affiliates in low tax countries to affiliates in high tax countries. Previous papers have either omitted internal debt or external debt from the analysis. We are the...

This paper analyzes the impact of countries' tax attractiveness on the allocation of risk within multinational groups. Our dataset contains subsidiaries located in 32 European countries and owned by parents from 90 different countries globally. We show that tax symmetry positively influences the...

Multinational companies can exploit the tax advantage of debt more aggressively than national companies by shifting debt from affiliates in low tax countries to affiliates in high tax countries. Previous papers have either omitted internal debt or external debt from the analysis. We are the...

This paper is concerned with tax-planning strategies of multinational corporations. A theoretical analysis discusses the choice of the capital structure in a setting where intercompany loans can be used to shift profits to low-tax countries. Empirical evidence is provided using micro-level panel...

Multinational companies can exploit the tax advantage of debt more aggressively than national companies. Besides utilizing the standard debt tax shield, multinationals can shift debt from affiliates in low-tax countries to affiliates in high-tax countries. We study the capital structure of...

We examine cash holdings and leverage levels of German listed (non-financial and non-utility) firms. We document a secular increase in cash ratios over the last twenty years (1992–2011), reducing the net debt book leverage ratio for the average sample firm close to zero. Using pre-diction...