Universal owners can systemically diffuse their investment preferences to a large share of the market. We use the unexpected release of a corporate governance expectation document by Norway's sovereign wealth fund as a natural experiment to understand how active universal investors can influence...

Specified Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) are a special type of public companies currently available to investors in financial markets. As an investment vehicle, modern SPACs are traced back to 18th century England where blank checks were first mentioned as blind pools during the infamous...

This study examines the effects of CEO global reputation on cross-border M&A performances. Based on the CEO's Twitter accounts, we hand-collect the information about the CEO’s followers to measure their global reputation. We find that CEOs with better global reputations improve cross-border...

Foreign firms terminate their SEC registration in the aftermath of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) because they no longer require outside funds to finance growth opportunities. Deregistering firms' insiders benefit from greater discretion to consume private benefits without having to raise higher...

This paper examines the impact of cross-border acquisition announcements on the U.S. bidders’ credit risk. On average, we find a significant increase in bidders’ rating-adjusted credit default swap (CDS) spreads around an acquisition announcement in an emerging market (EM), but no marked...

This paper explains the role of legal counsels in various stages of life of Specified Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) and their impact on the speed of IPO, IPO success/withdrawal, and merger success. Paper observes the SPAC market from 2003 until the end of 2020 and finds that more...

In this international study, we explore the benefits of strong institutions (or the perils of weak institutions) through the lens of equity issuance. We posit that strong governance—e.g., rule of law, control of corruption and shareholder rights—does not necessarily confer benefits on the...

We examine the announcement returns of acquisitions made by Indian firms during the period 1995 to 2011. Our results confirm that the announcement returns to Indian acquirers are on average significantly positive. However, we are first to document that the announcement returns to Indian...

This paper investigates Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) deregistrations by foreign firms from the time the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) was passed in 2002 through 2008. We test two theories, the bonding theory and the loss of competitiveness theory, to understand why foreign firms leave...

Introducing this volume of the EIB Papers and linking the various contributions, this paper emphasises that the internationalisation of production in Europe, which creates cross-border production networks, is an increasingly important element of globalisation, has been spreading to new EU...