We study the effect of state ownership on the market-to-book ratios of publicly traded European utilities from 1994 to 2005. We find that when the company is subject to independent regulation, state ownership seems positively associated with firm value. This relation tends to appear in countries...

States and their representatives, national governments, play a key role in national telecommunication markets. As lawmakers, they determine the playing field of the agents in the markets and the decision powers of national regulators. Simultaneously, they are involved in appointing presidential...

We study the effect of state ownership on the market-to-book ratios of publicly traded European utilities observed from 1994 to 2005. We find that when the company is subject to independent regulation, state ownership is positively associated with firm value. This effect is strong and...

Ten years after large scale privatization of utilities has started in Europe, EU regulated utilities have substantially increased their debt to equity ratios. In this paper we study the impact of capital structure on pricing regulation, firms' market value and investment, using a dataset of 92...

This paper examines the investment and financial decisions of a sample of 92 EU regulated utilities, taking into account key institutional features of EU public utilities, such as: a) regulation by agencies with various degrees of independence; b) partial ownership of the state in the regulated...