This paper reconsiders the issue of share price reactions to dividend announcements. Previous papers rely almost exclusively on a naive dividend model in which the dividend change is used as a proxy for the dividend surprise. We use the difference between the actual dividend and the analyst...

This paper investigates the wealth effects of private equity (PE) investor purchases of shares in German quoted companies. It is the first study to analyze these effects for the German market which is particularly interesting due to its distinct characteristics with regard to the ownership...

We analyze the impact of expected (targeted) capital structure decisions on information asymmetries. We measure information asymmetry from equity liquidity through the use of an information asymmetry index that is based on six measures that capture trading activity, trading costs, and the price...

This paper provides primary evidence of whether certification via reputable underwriters is beneficial to investors in the corporate bond market. We focus on the high-yield bond market, in which certification of issuer quality is most valuable to investors owing to low liquidity and issuing...

This paper uses a new perspective to analyze information obtained from capital structure decisions. Most previous studies either separately tested how firms adjust to leverage targets, or observed how financial policy changes convey information such as balance sheet items. However, we analyze...

German firms pay out a lower proportion of their cash flows, but a higher proportion of their published profits than UK and US firms. We estimate partial adjustment models and report two major findings. First, German firms base their dividend decisions on cash flows rather than published...

Using panel data on 275 German exchange-listed companies I examine the relationship between founding-family ownership and firm performance. My results show that family firms are not only more profitable than widely-held firms but also outperform companies with other types of blockholders....

We examine shareholder wealth effects in a heterogeneous sample of 115 European leveraged going private transactions from 1997 to 2005. Average abnormal returns as reaction to the LBO announcement amount to 24.20%. In cross-sectional regressions, we find that these value gains can largely be...

This paper studies the impact of the concentration of control, the type of controlling shareholder and the dividend tax preference of the controlling shareholder on dividend policy for a panel of 220 German firms over 1984-2005. In line with the agency model, we find a negative relation between...