Based on a sample of 7,378 firms going public in the 1975-2005 period, we document a significant underperformance of IPO firms over the first year after going public, while there is virtually no underperformance thereafter. Moreover, by decomposing the Carhart-alpha we find that IPO...

The question of whether the CEO should also serve as chairman of the board is one of themost hotly debated issues in the recent corporate governance discussion. While agencytheoreticarguments advocate a separation of decision and control functions, the empiricalevidence focusing on U.S....

This article analyses the relation between a firm's equity capital structure, managerial and outside block ownership, and firm value based on a unique and hand-collected sample of 545 observations on 174 Swiss firms over the period from 2002 to 2005. While previous papers concentrate either on...