Royal Ahold (Koninklijke Ahold NV) was one of the major success stories in the 1990s and is one of the major failures in corporate governance, suffering a complete meltdown in 2003. This clinical study analyzes Ahold's growth strategy through acquisitions and isolates the cause of the failed...

This paper assesses the effectiveness of The Netherlands' private sector self-regulation initiative (quot;The Peters Committeequot;) to improve corporate governance. We compare corporate governance characteristics and examine the relation between firm value and these characteristics before and...

This paper focuses on dominant owners' use of leverage to finance their blockholdings and its relationship to dividend policy. We postulate that blockholder leverage may impact payout policy, in particular when earnings are hit by a negative shock. We use panel data for France where blockholders...

This paper focuses on dominant owners' use of leverage to finance their blockholdings and its relationship to dividend policy. We postulate that blockholder leverage may impact payout policy, in particular when earnings are hit by a negative shock. We use panel data for France where blockholders...

This paper investigates whether top executives have significant individual-specific effects on accruals that cannot be explained by firm characteristics. Exploiting 37 years of individual executive and firm data, we find that individual executives play a significant role in determining firms'...