UK firms going public have a choice between public offers and placings. This choice has important implications in terms of who bears the risk of the issue failing and of its costs. We find that firms with higher "ex ante" uncertainty choose a placing contract. Highly reputable sponsors and...

This paper contributes to the research on corporate governance by predicting the effects of European takeover regulation. In particular, we investigate whether the recent reforms of takeover regulation in Europe are leading to a harmonization of the national legislations. With the help of 150...

This paper analyses the evolution of ownership and control in German and UK IPOs. In a first stage we try to explain why the pre-IPO shareholders of some firms sell out whereas those of other firms do not. German IPOs are matched by size with UK IPOs to obtain a first sample and matched by...

"This paper analyses the short-term wealth effects of large intra-European takeover bids. We find announcement effects of 9% for the target firms compared to a statistically significant announcement effect of only 0.7% for the bidders. The type of takeover bid has a large impact on the...

We study the underpricing of firms listed on the two largest EuroNM stock exchanges, the Neuer Markt of Germany and the Nouveau Marché of France. We find that the high underpricing in these two markets - contrary to the evidence on the US - is not driven by insiders' selling behaviour. However,...

This paper investigates whether investment spending of firms is sensitive to the availability of internal funds. Imperfect capital markets create a hierarchy for the different sources of funds such that investment and financial decisions are not independent. The relation between corporate...