The increase in institutional ownership of recent decades has been accompanied by an enhanced role played by institutions in monitoring companies' corporate governance behaviour. Activist hedge funds and private equity firms have achieved a degree of success in actively shaping the business...

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are very important to any economy. They are great job creators, helping to reduce poverty and achieve higher levels of development in all economic sectors. However, SMEs are susceptible to inadequate law and regulation, mainly in countries implementing...

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are very important to any economy. They are great job creators, helping to reduce poverty and achieve higher levels of development in all economic sectors. However, SMEs are susceptible to inadequate law and regulation, mainly in countries implementing...

This paper studies the short- and long-run share price performance of firms that have gone public on the Euro New Markets (EuroNMs) since their foundation in 1996/97. The initial and long-run returns are remarkable in four ways. First, underpricing is on average 2-3 times higher than that on the...

We examine the impact of lead arrangers' reputation on the design of loan contracts such as spread, fees and the inclusion of restrictive covenants. Controlling for the non-randomness of the lender-borrower match (self-selection bias), we find that the reputation of top tier arrangers leads to...

The reform of bank supervision represents one of the great institutional challenges for the European Union. The recent pattern of cross-border failures in supervision reflects the extent to which a better functioning system of supervision is critical for the safe operation of the banking system...

At the end of the twentieth century, it was thought by many that the Anglo-American system of corporate governance was performing effectively and some observers claimed to see an international trend towards convergence around this model. There can be no denying that the recent corporate...

In recent years, legal options (ex ante and ex post choices created by law) have gained acceptance in the European Union. Notwithstanding the move toward soft law measures, the EC's appetite for options or pro-choice company law provisions remains unclear. There are significant barriers to the...