Government intervention in the bankruptcy reorganisation of listed companies in China constitutes a major obstacle to implement the Enterprise Bankruptcy Law of the People's Republic of China which was enacted in 2006 (2006 EBL). The 2006 EBL improves upon its predecessor legislation — the...

This study provides new stylized facts on the determinants of corporate failure and acquisition in Germany. It also offers important lessons for the design of empirical studies. We show that firms experiencing failure or acquisition are significantly different from surviving firms on a number of...

This study provides new stylized facts on the determinants of corporate failure and acquisition in Germany. It also offers important lessons for the design of empirical studies. We show that firms experiencing failure or acquisition are significantly different from surviving firms on a number of...

Using data from financial reorganization plans filed by insolvent Canadian firms, we estimate the discount rate implicit in the unsecured creditor's reorganization decision. Using (HARA) utility functions, we find the implicit monthly discount rate of creditors to be 4.9%, which corresponds to...

This chapter, for the Oxford Handbook of Corporate Governance, provides a survey of law, economics, and finance scholarship at the intersection of corporate governance and financial distress. In financial distress, both inside and outside of bankruptcy court, formal and informal control rights...

We examine how firm characteristics, particularly the degree of firm complexity and the firm's need for specialty knowledge, affect the relationship between corporate governance and the risk of bankruptcy. We find that having larger boards reduces the risk of bankruptcy only for complex firms....

This study examines the effect of board composition on the likelihood of corporate failure in the UK. We consider both independent and non-independent (grey) non-executive directors (NEDs) to enhance our understanding of the impact of NEDs' personal or economic ties with the firm and its...

We exploit a quasi-natural experiment to identify the importance of professional connections in determining a firm's board composition. At the individual level, directors who share work experiences with the executives/directors of bankrupt firms experience on average a 6-percentage-point decline...

In this Article, we use hand-collected data to shed light on a troubling innovation in bankruptcy practice. We show that distressed companies, especially those controlled by private-equity sponsors, often now prepare for a Chapter 11 filing by appointing bankruptcy experts to their boards of...

We find that co-opted boards facilitate more erratic and arbitrary decision-making, contributing towards default risk. A one standard deviation increase in co-option increases default risk by 11% relative to normal levels. Supporting the notion that co-option makes decision-making more erratic,...