Institutional shareholders around the world increasingly use active share-voting to protect their portfolio investments and improve corporate governance. However, exercising voting rights involves costly and often arcane country-specific legal rules. This report is one of a series examining the...

This article reflects on some of the banking crisis resolution measures taken by the Swedish and Norwegian governments during the Scandinavian banking crisis of the early 1990s. Much as in the U.S. in 2008, the Scandinavian crisis two decades ago was preceded by a broad relaxation of bank...

We survey the empirical literature on corporate financial restructuring, including breakup transactions (divestitures, spin-offs, equity carveouts, and tracking stocks), leveraged recapitalizations, and leveraged buyouts (LBOs). For each transaction type, we survey techniques, deal financing,...

The U.S. government has acquired large shareholdings in companies like AIG, GM and others, essentially becoming "owner of last resort" through its defense of the "too big to fail" doctrine. I argue in this Congressional testimony that the government should adopt a pro-active stance in terms of...

This paper analyzes the effect of corporate debt offerings on stock prices. Straight debt offerings have non-positive price effects, while convertible debt offerings have significantly negative effects. Public utility mortgage (non-convertible) bond offerings have marginally negative effects,...

In 1970, France introduced disclosure rules governing public tender offers without changing an existing four-week minimum offer period. We document a substantial increase in total offer premiums thereafter. Post-1970 premiums are also significantly higher in public than in private tender offers...

This paper tests the hypothesis that horizontal mergers generate positive abnormal returns to stockholders of the bidder and target firms because they increase the probability of successful collusion among rival producers. Under the collusion hypothesis, rivals of the merging firms benefit from...