There are few things more constant in life than the rise and fall of financial markets. When markets crash, however, we are forced to restore them while learning from our mistakes. In the wake of the recent subprime mortgage crisis, Congress has drastically but deservedly overhauled the...

We survey and interview Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) of French firms in 2009 about the impact of the global financial crisis and their firms' financial flexibility levels before and during the crisis. Over two-thirds of CFOs report a strong impact of the crisis and cite liquidity problems,...

We examine the political dynamics which led to the codification of the Principles and Standards for sound compensation practices at financial institutions at international (G 20) level and to their subsequent implementation on both sides of the Atlantic. We show that the regulation of bankers'...

The paper outlines the developments in the EU regulatory framework for executive remuneration since 2004 and going through the financial crisis. It also presents the results of an analysis of the remuneration practices adopted by the largest European listed firms before and after the crisis,...

Using unique detailed data, we describe the role of internal capital markets in Italian business groups before and after the financial crisis, an exogenous event which provides an ideal setting to assess whether the working of internal capital markets helps group-affiliated firms to mitigate...

Usual measures of the risk-taking incentives of bank CEOs do not capture the risk-shifting incentives that the exposure of a CEO's wealth to his firm's stock price (delta) creates in highly levered firms. We find evidence consistent with the importance of these incentives for bank CEOs: In a...

This paper examines whether the systemic risk of financial institutions is associated with the risk-taking incentives generated by executive compensation. We measure managerial risk-taking incentives with the sensitivities of chief executive officer (CEO) and chief financial officer (CFO)...

We contribute to the literature on “market timing” by exploring periods of simultaneous equity issues and debt retirements (a leverage decreasing recapitalization, LDR). We hypothesize and show that such LDRs are driven by measures of creditor control but are not predicted by capital...