We review the governance role of private equity (PE) firms in companies that have experienced an LBO. We conjecture that PE firms may provide powerful remedies to agency conflicts associated with public and private firms, such as managerial entrenchment and opportunism

This paper examines the effect of ownership structure of a controlling shareholder on the financial constraints of non-financial firms in 22 economies for the 1982-2009 period. We find that the overinvestment propensity of a controlling shareholder becomes less severe with an increase in...

In this contribution, at first, we introduce a basic network framework to study pyramidal structures and wedges between ownership and control of companies. Then, we apply it to a dataset of 53.5 million of companies operating in 208 countries. Among others, we detect a strong concentration of...

We examine the governance transfer effect of corporate blockholders in a sample of 892 block acquisitions across 42 countries from 1990 to 2008. Using earnings management as a proxy for corporate governance outcome, we find that target firms' earnings management is aligned with that of block...

This paper analyzes the relationship between ownership structure (shareholders' stake and identity) and corporate risk taking for a sample of companies from 21 OECD countries for the period 2000-2008. Our main contribution is considering simultaneously the effect of growth opportunities and the...

This paper investigates whether foreign institutional investors affect the global convergence of financial reporting practices. Using several measures of reporting convergence, we show that U.S. institutional ownership is positively associated with subsequent changes in emerging market firms'...

We study how generalized trust shapes the ability of firms with different ownership forms to obtain trade financing and perform during a financial crisis. Exploiting geographic variations in trust across Italian regions and the occurrence of the 2008-09 financial crisis in a...

We examine relationship between common institutional ownership and corporate social responsibility (CSR). We find that common institutional ownership is negatively associated with the level of CSR, which supports an anti-competitive view. We conduct a propensity score matching (PSM) analysis and...