An increasingly important external control mechanism affecting the governance of young and fast growing companies worldwide is the emergence of institutional and private equity investors, as equity owners. Institutional investors have the potential to influence management's activities directly...

We analyze whether companies involved in a securities class action suit (SCAS) exhibit differential capital structure decisions, and if the information revealed by a corporate scandal affects the security issuances and stock prices of industry peers. Our findings show that before a SCAS is...

Using a sample of 622 companies in 25 countries over a four-year period (2003ndash;2006), we investigate the translation risk hedging strategy of multinational companies. We find that a significant percentage of companies (47%) actively manage their translation risk. A credit rating...

We test the impact of differential levels of capital injection and different regions of incorporation on the governance structure of portfolio companies.Using a unique hand-collected questionnaire-based dataset from 164 companies in 5 countries (US, UK, France, Germany, Spain and Sweden) we shed...

Analysts' target prices have received limited attention in academic research. In this paper we try to fill the gap by developing an innovative multi-layer accuracy metric that we test on a novel database. Our analysis shows that forecasting accuracy is very limited: prediction errors are...

Both bond rating agencies and equity analysts evaluate publicly traded companies, offering their opinions as a service to investors. Yet, as the recent financial crisis has clearly shown, the quality and timeliness of rating agencies information is questionable. In this paper, we show that...

Empirical research has provided extensive evidence on the inefficiency of bookbuilding in controlling underpricing. Both academics and practitioners have investigated this phenomenon proposing innovative offering methodologies. In this paper we explore the information revelation and underpricing...

We study a hand-collected dataset that includes 507 IPOs on the UK Alternative Investment Market (AIM) from FY2004 to FY2010. IPOs backed by venture capitalists registered an average underpricing of 25.8 percent; almost double that of non-venture-backed IPOs (14.6%). We provide new empirical...

This paper investigates the political and legal determinants of cross-country differences in VC investments. Our results show strong and positive effects of a favorable sociopolitical and entrepreneurial environment on the inception and development of VC investment activity. Controlling for...