The aim of mergers and acquisitions is to create wealth for the shareholders and usually this is accomplished through synergistic expectations. However the evaluation and identification of synergies in mergers and acquisitions is one of the important issues in Corporate Finance. In this paper it...

We study the location and timing of annual shareholder meetings. When companies move their annual meetings a great distance from headquarters, they tend to announce disappointing earnings results and experience pronounced stock market underperformance in the months after the meeting. Companies...

Courts have articulated a number of legal tests to distinguish corporate transactions that have a legitimate business or economic purpose from those carried out largely, if not solely, for favorable tax treatment. We outline an approach to analyzing the economic substance of corporate...

This paper develops a dynamic model of cross-border M&A activity. We show that foreign firms will be relatively more attracted to targets in the domestic country that had high productivity levels several years prior to acquisition, but then suffered a negative productivity shock (i.e., cherries...

We investigate whether banks use of loan loss provisions (LLPs) to manage the level and volatility of their earnings and examine the implications for bank risk. We find that banks use LLPs to manage the level and volatility of earnings downward when they are abnormally high and when expected...

A Specified Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) is formed to purchase operating businesses within a priori determined time period. SPACs existed in U.S capital markets since the 1920s. Their corporate structure has recently become debated in the legal and financial literatures, especially their...

Given an owner's noncommitment timing strategy and a manager's hidden action, we consider how the optimal compensation contract for the manager is designed and how the corresponding timing decisions to launch the project and replace the manager are determined. Using a real options approach, we...

This paper studies the contracting problem between banks and their bankers, embedded in a competitive labour market for banker talent.  To motivate effort banks must use some variable remuneration.  Such remuneration introduces a risk-shifting problem by creating incentives to inflate early...