Divestitures have the potential to create shareholder value. However, the magnitude of the wealth effect depends on the likelihood of finding more valuable uses for the divested assets and the seller's ability to eliminate negative synergies. Strong performers should have less scope to benefit...

This article evaluates the extent and sources of value associated with the divestitures of French firms over the period 1990 to 2010. The results show that excess returns are consistently higher when the divesting firm is highly levered. The market reaction is also stronger when the seller's...

Consistent with existing evidence based on US firms, we show that good governance is associated with higher credit ratings. The most significant variables are institutional ownership and disclosure quality. This finding suggests that active monitoring (by large shareholders) and lower...

Foreign investors have in recent years increased their ownership of Japanese firms. Has this greater involvement contributed to improve firm performance? We show that the answer depends on the assumptions regarding the unobservable firm effects. If the latter are assumed to be time invariant, as...

Characterized by a high level of R&D expenditure, pharmaceutical firms are also subject to specific risks that are reflected in their financial policies. In contrast to other firms, whose investments are directly related to internal cash flows, Japanese pharmaceutical companies do not appear to...

(VF) Dans cette étude portant sur un vaste échantillon de sociétés japonaises, nous montrons que, comme aux États-Unis, une bonne gouvernance se traduit par un niveau de disponibilités plus élevé. Toutefois, cette relation ne s’explique pas par le fait que les sociétés japonaises à...

This paper examines the influence of corporate governance on the risk taking of Japanese firms. We show that family control and ownership concentration are associated with higher idiosyncratic risk, whereas bank control has the opposite effect. Considering the link between idiosyncratic risk and...

Evidence based on US firms suggests that large boards restrain risk taking. We investigate whether a similar effect exists in Japan. Our results confirm that firms with larger boards exhibit lower performance variability relative to firms with smaller boards. However, this effect is less...

We investigate whether multiple large shareholders (MLS) affect corporate risk-taking. Using hand-collected data on French publicly-listed companies over the period 2003-2007, we show that the presence, number and voting power of MLS, other than the largest controlling shareholder (LCS), are...