We examine the determinants of cash holdings in private and public companies. Using a sample of more than 280,000 U.K. private firms and 970,000 firm-year observations from the 1994-2010 period we show that cash holdings in private firms support both the trade-off theory and the financing...

The protection provided by antitakeover provisions (ATPs) can be used by managers to undertake acquisitions (M&A) that either reduce their personal risk but worsen shareholder wealth, or those that increase their personal risk but enhance shareholder wealth. We exploit sources of exogeneity at...

I investigate the impact of daily oil price changes on the stock returns of a wide array of industries. I find that in addition to the stock returns of industries that depend heavily on oil, stock returns of some industries that use little oil also are sensitive to oil prices perhaps because...

We examine the impact of target management involvement as bidders in a sample of completed going-private buyouts. Announcement period and long run target shareholder returns do not appear to be lower in management involved deals. We attempt to identify disciplining mechanisms in the takeover...

We examine force-the-vote (FTV) provisions in M&A transactions from 2003-2016 and test competing agency and efficient contracting explanations for their usage. Target FTV provisions are observed more frequently when bidding is costly, and are associated with higher target returns, lower...

We investigate how ownership structure influences operating performance and implied agency costs using multi-year data on over 42,000 firms, covering the full spectrum of ownership and management arrangements ranging from owner or non-owner managed single or multiple-owner private firms, through...