This paper makes a case for the future development of European corporate law throughregulatory competition rather than EC legislation. It is for the first time becoming legallypossible for firms within the EU to select the national company law that they wish togovern their activities. A...

We find that the decision by a potential acquirer to complete or cancel an announced acquisitionproposal is sensitive to new information generated after the announcement of the acquisition.Both the acquirer and target’s cumulative abnormal returns (CAR) over different windows afterthe...

In this paper we examine the theoretical conditions under which a firm will have incentives to optimallychoose investment projects of duration that deviates from its stated horizon objective. Our approachconsiders a context in which investment horizon is subject to randomness and its length is...

While in the US stock-based incentives are commonly used since the 50s of the last century, in Germany they were invented only some ten years ago. Even in 1996 firms faced considerable regulatory difficulties when willing to grant such incentives. In the meantime the legal environment has...

We analyse to what extent the accrual anomaly is related to the choice of the accounting system as well as firm-level heterogeneity in corporate governance mechanisms. Using a unique dataset of listed German firms over the period 1995 to 2005 we first corroborate former results indicating that...

This paper investigates the strategy of private equity investors to take public companiesprivate in blockholder-based economies. Drawing on a unique dataset, we providestrong evidence that private equity investors buy companies in order to mitigatepotential agency problems and hence to improve...

We analyse whether family firms differ from non-family firms in terms of business segment and geographical diversification or the application of currency hedging instruments. This analysis is based on a unique dataset of 339 publicly listed companies (1,561 firm years) in the German Prime...

This paper extends research in the field of private equity investments in family firms. It contributes to the literature by fundamentally analyzing the decision criteria of family firm owners for using minority investments of private equity investors. This type of financing might be of great...

We address the question of whether hedge fund and private equity investments in public firms are motivated by corporate governance improvements. As opposed to traditional financial investors both HF and PE are likely to have the incentives to alleviate agency conflicts. However, against the...

We address the question of whether hedge fund and private equity investments in public firms are motivatedby corporate governance improvements. As opposed to traditional financial investors both HF and PE arelikely to have the incentives to alleviate agency conflicts. However, against the...