This study investigates the determinants of changes in corporate ownership and firm failure, taking into account different types of sellers and buyers of control blocks. For a large panel of German corporations we find that firms are more likely to fail or to be sold when performance is poor,...

The paper describes the legal and economic environment of mergers and acquisitions in Germany and explores barriers to obtaining and executing corporate control. Various cases are used to demonstrate that resistance by different stakeholders including minority shareholders, organized labour and...

This paper investigates how multinational firms choose the capital structure of their foreign affiliates in response to political risk. We focus on two choice variables, the leverage and the ownership structure of the foreign affiliate, and we distinguish different types of political risk, such...

The Italian and German banking systems shared similar characteristics early in the 1990s but have evolved in different directions since then: Italy privatized its publicly-owned banks while Germany has maintained a large share of state-owned savings banks. Contemporaneously, banks in both...

This paper argues that differences in the dispersion of corporate ownership can help explain why party positions on corporate governance vary across countries and over time. Expectations that left/right conflicts should pitch capital against labor overlook that "capital" is not a homogenous...

Several top deals already closed, a still highly fragmented industry and strong pressure for further consolidation following the financial crisis - renewable energy certainly has become a red-hot topic in M&A. Surveying 220 companies in the solar photovoltaic, utility and financial sector as...

Das Wertpapiererwerbs- und Übernahmegesetz (WpÜG) schafft für deutsche Zielgesellschaften einen neuen organisierten Markt für die Konzentration von Streubesitz. Der Beitrag analysiert den Regulierungsbedarf aus ökonomischer Sicht, er präsentiert und erläutert die ausgeklügelten...

The volume is a collection of papers on 'M&A in Japan - a new instrument for corporate policy', with a special emphasis on small and medium firms, presented at a workshop in December 1999. The first contribution gives an overview of international M&A in recent years. Next, preliminery results of...

Inventors often experience a low productivity after their company has been subject to a merger or acquisition (M&As). It is of central managerial interest to identify factors facilitating the integration of new inventive staff and thereby counteracting innovation declines after M&As. This paper...