Recent empirical research has stressed the importance of economy wide factors in the assessment of default risk, for instance for bond portfolios or portfolios of bank loans. Macroeconomic risk is essentially systematic, as it is difficult to reduce through diversification. Adequate forecasts of...

The bankruptcy prediction literature generally ignores corporate ownership and assumes companies are independent economic entities. In Continental Europe this latter assumption does not hold, due to the importance of business groups. Using a sample of mostly non-quoted Belgian medium and large...

Dit artikel stelt dat een governancesysteem noodzakelijkerwijs is gestoeld op zogenaamde “checks and balances”, dwz machtsevenwichten tussen diverse partijen. Gezien dergelijke evenwichten relatief fragiel zijn en kunnen worden verstoord door allerhande maatschappelijke en economische...

The rising globalization of the past decades has been pushing firms to expand their activities internationally in order to remain competitive. Serving foreign markets offers various opportunities, but also exposes firms to additional risks affecting their capital structure. Theoretically the...

In contrast to the popular assumption of independence made in the classic corporate finance literature, many companies around the world are linked through common ownership to form business groups. This paper reviews the growing literature on the consequences of business group membership. The...

In contrast to the popular assumption of independence made in the classic corporate finance literature, many companies around the world are linked through common ownership to form business groups. This paper reviews the growing literature on the consequences of business group membership. The...

Recent studies show that cash holdings cannot be considered a mere byproduct of corporate financial decision making but is an integral part of the explicit or implicit risk management policies of firms. This paper first gives an overview of the corporate finance literature from the past few...

Most models in the bankruptcy prediction literature implicitly assume companies are stand-alone entities. However, in view of the importance of business groups in Continental Europe, ignoring group ties may have a negative impact on predictive reliability. We find that models encompassing both...