We show that in countries with more societal trust shareholders cast fewer votes at shareholder meetings and are more supportive of management proposals. This result is confirmed by instrumental variable regressions. It also holds at the U.S.-county level and for voting by U.S. institutional...

Exploiting the 2009 amendments to Regulation S-K, we provide unique evidence on the first-time disclosure of the reasons firms state for combining (separating) the roles of CEO and chairman. The stated reasons support both agency theory and organization theory. They are more numerous and...

We explore differences in the levels of dispersed ownership that lead to a second returns-based free float hedging factor, which augments the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) in explaining the cross-section of stock returns. Using a comprehensive sample of stocks from Japan and the...

This paper explains the choice of the cross-listing location with particular emphasis on the level of investor protection provided by the host market. We find that firms with concentrated control, with a higher level of risk and those with more pronounced financing needs cross-list on a market...

An influential strand of the finance literature focuses on the nature and extent of shareholder rights vis-à-vis employees. Most of the extant literature on the subject relies on a limited number of case studies and/or broad macroeconomic data, whereas this article draws on evidence from a...

This paper studies the factors that influence the CEO succession decision in family firms whose incumbent CEO is a member of the controlling family. The sample includes all such firms from France, Germany and the UK. We propose a new measure of directors' independence, which adjusts for various...

Insider trading may alleviate financing constraints by conveying value relevant information to the market (the information effect) or may exacerbate financing constraints by impairing market liquidity and distorting insiders' incentives to disclose value-relevant information (the confidence...

Purpose - The aim of the paper is to study the long-run under-performance of UK initial public offerings (IPOs) by relating it to the pre-IPO financial performance of the firm as well as the managerial decisions taken before the IPO.Design/methodology/approach - The three-year share returns of...

When a company offers shares in an initial public offering (IPO), existing owners often enter into lock-in agreements prohibiting them from selling shares for a specified period after the IPO. There is some recent U.S. evidence of predictable share-price movements at the time of expiry of these...