20 countries around the world have used incentive packages, including bonus shares and discounts, to attract retail investors to participate in privatizations. Using a unique dataset, we estimate the total cost of incentive packages at approximately $27 billion. The expiration of bonus share...

Until 1970, the New York Stock Exchange prohibited public incorporation of member firms. After the rules were relaxed to allow joint stock firm membership, investment-banking concerns organized as partnerships or closely-held private corporations went public in waves, with Goldman Sachs (1999)...

This paper examines the influence of stock markets on corporate performance. It compares large private and publicly listed companies in the UK. It finds that, controlling for size and industry, quoted firms invest more and grow more rapidly than unquoted firms. They earn higher profits and pay...

The role of government shareholding in corporate performance is central to an understanding of China’s newly privatized large firms and the stock market. In this paper, we analyse shareholders as agents that can both harm and benefit companies. We examine the ownership structure of 826 listed...

We use a broad range of contractual information to assess the empirical relevance of different financial theories of trade credit. The common feature of all financial theories is that suppliers have an advantage over other lenders in financing credit-constrained firms. While the reasons for the...

The main aims of this paper are, first, to construct a consistent comparative set of data on the sources of finance for investment over the period 1970--89 for Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States and second, to challenge some conventional views of the international...

In a typical IPO game with first-price auctions, we argue that risk-averse investors always underbid in equilibrium because of subjective interpretations of the firm' communication about its actual value and resulting risk aversion about the likelihood of facing investors with higher valuations....

This paper analyses the control of Belgian listed companies.The analysis reveals that control of listed companies in Belgium is highly concentrated . Business groups, holding companies, and voting pacts, play an important role in bringing about this concentration.The main characteristics of the...

The paper investigates why the corporate landscapes of Germany and UK are so different in terms of control by analyzing ownership evolution in recent IPOs. We report the control evolution of a sample of size- and industry-matched German and UK companies six years subsequent to the flotation. The...

The well-known tax results obtained in the traditional model of investment are re-examined in a model of imperfect corporate governance. The corporation tax, the dividend tax and the capital gains tax have unconventional stock market and real effects which operate through the managerial...