It is the objective of this paper to determine the voting premium for French shares by comparing the values of voting and non-voting shares, and to analyze the value of the voting rights. The study uses data for 25 French companies which had both types of shares outstanding and traded on the...

We investigate the cost of capital in a model with an agency conflict between inside managers and outside shareholders. Inside ownership reflects the classic tradeoff between incentives and risk diversification, and the severity of agency costs depends on a parameter representing investor...

While in the US stock-based incentives are commonly used since the 50s of the last century, in Germany they were invented only some ten years ago. Even in 1996 firms faced considerable regulatory difficulties when willing to grant such incentives. In the meantime the legal environment has...

This paper investigates the strategy of private equity investors to take public companiesprivate in blockholder-based economies. Drawing on a unique dataset, we providestrong evidence that private equity investors buy companies in order to mitigatepotential agency problems and hence to improve...

This study investigates the relationship between institutional ownership and dividend payout behavior of the firm in Germany. Using a propensity scoring method estimator to control for endogeneity problems, we find evidence that neither institutional ownership nor bank control is statistically...

This paper demonstrates that the current literature on cross-ownership among firms underestimates the true degree of separation between cash flow rights and voting rights. We use accounting identities to define coefficients of control, such that any (direct or indirect) control of a firm may be...

This study examines changes in block ownership for a large sample of listed and non-listed German firms. The frequency of block trading is similar to other countries, and the vast majority of block trades leads to changes in ultimate ownership (control transfers). Such changes are more likely...