Creditor reliance on accounting-based debt covenants suggests that debtors are potentially concerned with board of director characteristics that influence the financial accounting process. In a sample of Samp;P 500 firms, we find that the cost of debt financing is inversely related to board...

We investigate the impact of founding-family ownership structure on the agency cost of debt. We find that founding-family ownership is common in large, publicly traded firms and is related, both statistically and economically, to a lower cost of debt financing. The evidence also indicates that...

Distressed firms and the banks that lend to these firms often have conflicting interests when going through the Chapter 11 process, freefall bankruptcy vs prepack bankruptcy. We examine whether common ownership, i.e., an institution with holdings in both the borrowing and the lending firms,...

A substantive body of equity-market academic research documents an extensive range of costs arising from the SEC's October 2000 adoption of strictures on selective disclosure and insider trading; suggesting an unusual outcome, specifically, an increase in informed trading. We investigate the...

We argue that information about firm activities can vary substantially in the presence of founder or heir ownership, thereby influencing the risks borne by minority investors. We explore two hypotheses with regard to these controlling shareholders and corporate transparency, focusing on their...

Recent research indicates that founding families have substantial stakes in roughly one-third of the largest U.S. companies and, in these firms, control nearly twenty percent of all board seats. Burkart, Panunzi, and Shleifer (2003) suggest that a key element in the desirability of family...

Creditor reliance on accounting-based debt covenants suggests that debtors are potentially concerned with board of director characteristics that influence the integrity of financial accounting reports. In a sample of Samp;P 500 firms, we find that the cost of debt is inversely related to board...

Anecdotal accounts imply that founding families routinely engage in opportunistic activities that exploit minority shareholders. We gauge the severity of these moral hazard conflicts by examining whether founding families - as large, undiversified blockholders - seek to reduce firm-specific risk...

We investigate the relation between founding-family ownership and firm performance in large, publicly traded U.S. firms. We find that family ownership is both prevalent and substantial; families are present in about one-third of the Samp;P 500 firms and account for over 18% of outstanding...

We examine the fit between the ownership data provided by four surrogate databases and the data collected from proxy statements. We discover an unambiguous pecking order among the surrogates relative to the benchmark ownership statistics of corporate proxy statements. Corporate Text is first,...