For a sample of successful tender offers, we find that the shareholders of high q bidders gain significantly more than the shareholders of low q bidders. In general, the shareholders of low q targets benefit more from takeovers than the shareholders of high q targets. Typical bidders have...

The free cash flow hypothesis advanced by Jensen (1988) states that managers endowed with free cash flow will invest it in negative net present value (NPV) projects rather than pay it out to shareholders. Jensen defines free cash flow as cash flow left after the firm has invested in all...

In nine East Asian countries, higher cash-flow rights are associated with a higher market valuation and higher control rights with a lower valuation, especially when cash-flow rights are low and control rights are high. This suggests the expropriation of minority shareholders by controlling...

Some East Asian firms diversify to circumvent external factor markets subject to high transaction costs. Other diversify as a means of expropriation by large stockholders. There is evidence that group affiliation is used to complement firm-level diversification in the creation of internal...

This paper investigates the benefits and associated agency costs of using internal capital markets through affiliating with groups using data of two thousand firms from nine East Asian economies between 1994-96. We find that mature and slow-growing firms with ownership structures more likely to...

Previous work on the exposure of firms to exchange rate risk has primarily focused on U.S. firms and, surprisingly, found stock returns were not significantly affected by exchange-rate fluctuations. The equity market premium for exposure to currency risk was also found to be insignificant. In...

We analyze the ultimate ownership and control of 5,232 corporations in 13 Western European countries. Firms are typically widely held (36.93 percent) or family controlled (44.29 percent). Widely-held firms are more important in the U.K. and Ireland, family-controlled firms in continental Europe....

We analyze the ultimate ownership and control of 3,740 corporations in five Western European countries. We document that families are the most pronounced type of controlling shareholders in Western Europe. In fact, they control 43.9 percent of Western European firms. We also document a...

We develop a bond pair approach to study (1) the shapes (slope and curvature) of individual spread curves, and (2) the relationship among spread curves for bonds with different ratings. We uncover downward sloping spread curves for triple C and double C bonds and upward sloping spread curves for...