I study how strategic alliances and their impact on future competitive incentives can motivate interfirm equity sales. In the model, an alliance between an entrepreneurial firm and an established firm improves efficiency for both. However, the requisite knowledge transfer heightens the established firm’s incentive to enter one of its partner’s markets. I show that equity can eliminate the entry...

This paper examines the relationship between ownership structure, analyst coverage, and forecast error for the entire population of non-financial companies listed on the Swiss Exchange for the period 2003-2013. The results show a negative association between concentrated ownership and analyst coverage for both family firms and firms held by a nonfamily blockholder. Furthermore, forecasts of ana...

This paper examines the “relative” information contained in insider director transactions. We find that insider transactions of multi-company directors reflect superior information about future relative returns; that is, directors are more likely to buy (sell) stocks of firms they direct that have better (worse) future returns. Examining related issues, we find weak support that December tax lo...

A multi-divisional firm can engage in ”winner-picking” to redistribute scarce funds efficiently across divisions. But there is a conflict between rewarding winners (investing) and producing resources with which to reward winners (incentives). Managers in winning divisions are tempted to free-ride on resources produced by managers in loosing divisions whose incentives to produce resources, antic...

This study investigates the long-run return performance following sell-off announcements of UK companies that apply the proceeds either for debt reduction or investment. Consistent with existing literature, we find that debt reduction sellers enjoy higher announcement time market reactions. In contrast, the subsequent longrun return performance is negative for the debt reduction sellers and pos...

A string of theoretical papers shows that the non-exclusivity of credit contracts generates important negative contractual externalities. Employing a unique dataset, we identify how these externalities affect the supply of credit. Using internal information on a creditor’s willingness to lend, we find that a creditor reduces its credit supply when a borrower obtains a loan at another creditor (...

Conventional wisdom suggests that CEO membership of the compensation committee is an open invitation to rent extraction by self-serving executives. However, using data from New Zealand – where CEO compensation committee membership is relatively common – we find that annual pay increments for CEOs with this apparent advantage averaged six percentage points less than those enjoyed by other CEOs d...

We document that in M&As a significant proportion of targets’ equity is owned by financial institutions that simultaneously own targets’ bonds (“dual holders”). Targets with larger equity ownership by dual holders have lower M&A equity premia and larger abnormal bond returns, particularly when dual holders stand to benefit more from appreciation of their bond stakes, e.g., when their bond owner...

We consider a setting in which two potential buyers, one with a prior toehold and one without, compete in a takeover modeled as an ascending auction with participating costs. The toeholder is more aggressive during the takeover process because she is also a seller of her own shares. The non-toeholder anticipates this extra-aggressiveness of the toeholder. Thus, he is deterred from participating...

We analyze a comprehensive set of mergers and acquisitions from SDC data from 1992 through 2009. We do not impose common restrictions such as excluding private bidders, small targets, or deals without a deal value. We show a broader scope of mergers and acquisitions activity than that implied in the literature, which generally oversamples larger deals involving public firms. Further, some of ou...