We empirically investigate the adoption of stock option plans in Japan after the corporate governance reforms of the early 2000s. We examine the determinants of stock option grants, especially focusing on the effects of herding behavior among Japanese firms and the change of accounting treatment...

In the last three decades, corporate governance and reporting have been confronted to a drift toward shareholders' primacy and value, and the revival of old-fashioned proprietary views against entity views on the business firm. This paper develops an accounting perspective of the relationship...

This paper reconsiders the issue of share price reactions to dividend announcements. Previous papers rely almost exclusively on a naive dividend model in which the dividend change is used as a proxy for the dividend surprise. We use the difference between the actual dividend and the analyst...

Billett and Xue (2007) document that the ex ante (pre-repurchase) takeover probability has a positive and significant impact on share repurchases, but there is no evidence that share repurchases are indeed associated with fewer ex post takeover bids. We examine whether share buyback deters...

We test a prediction from the corporate focus literature that cross-industry spinoff distributions, where the continuing and spunoff units belong to different two-digit Standard Industry Classification codes, create more value than own-industry spinoffs. Our results indicate significant value...

This report expands into early 2013 studies of the raw performance (profitability) of $457.6 billion of buybacks executed since 2000 by a sample of 232 corporations. The sample companies, drawn mainly from the technology sector, enjoy total equity market value today of $1.221 trillion. 75.0% of...

Departing from the traditional cash flow rights-dividend policy framework, this study investigates whether the level of control rights and the types of control of the ultimate controlling shareholders (UCSs) of listed firms in China influence their cash dividend policy. We find that the level of...

Analysis of the causes of failure has often been shallow. This paper proposes an explanation as to why some mergers fail to achieve, based on the comparison between merging firms' specifics. We argue that cancellation may stem from dividend policy dissimilarity between the acquirer and the...

This paper examines the relationship between ownership structure and dividend policy in Thailand in a sample of 1,927 observations over the period 2002-2010. The results show that firms are more likely to pay dividends when they have higher ownership concentration or the largest shareholder is...

Various studies have analyzed the main determinants of payment method in M&As since the 1980s. We examine how relative the existing dividend policy of the acquirer affects the choice of the payment method. Based on the contingent-pricing effect of stock offer, we hypothesize that the likelihood...