The work report first describes the current developments on the German market for nonperforming loans, which after its peak in spring 2007 is now also affected by the financial crisis. The sale of small and medium-size portfolios is described within the scope of a case study. Furthermore, the...

Private equity has seen an impressive activity surge in Germany over the last ten years. This working paper meets the increasing thirst for information on the German buyout market with an overview of its historic development, a quantitative analysis of its performance and a future outlook. While...

-- Public takeovers ; hostile takeovers ; notification requirements ; cash-settled equity total return swaps ; cash swaps ; equity options ; options ; mandatory offer ; insider trading ; capital markets ; regulated markets ; tender offer ; tender offer rules ; announcement obligations ;...

This article analyses the recent Leica judgement of the Higher Regional Court Frankfurt/Main and its consequences. In this judgement, the court has established an infringement of special formal requirements with respect to Leicaś invitation to the Annual General Meeting which, if correct, would...

We examine network effects as an impediment to optimal financial contracting. In devising the terms of their transaction, the parties may prefer to conform to a market standard rather than matching their own contracting needs. To study this possibility, we investigate choice of contract law...

This paper deals with legal damages if losses of chances are at stake. In response to disparate ad hoc rules that have emerged from legal practice in Europe, the present paper proposes a unifying principle to handle such cases. Quite generally, the purpose of a damages award is to compensate the...

When investments are non-verifiable, inducing cooperative investments with simple contracts may not be as difficult as previously thought. Indeed, modeling 'expectation damages' close to legal practice, we show that the default remedy of contract law induces the first best. Yet, in order to...

The legal notion of damages requires to compare the actual value of the creditor's assets with the hypothetical value that would have prevailed if the debtor had met his obligation. Moreover, values and causation may be uncertain. If nature's contribution is modelled as a random move then the...

Lecture on the first SFB/TR 15 meeting, Gummersbach, July, 18 - 20, 2004: This paper revisits the economic analysis of contract law for a setting of cooperative investments. While Che and Chung (1999) have shown that expectation damages perform rather poorly, the present paper argues that this...