Evaluating investments in international (and particularly in emerging) markets often leads to confusion and controversy among academics and practitioners. Various theories propose competing models, whereas practitioners build their own alternatives. Our study provides an assessment of the most...

We analyze corporate financial policies in leveraged buyouts (LBOs) in the presence of default risk. Our model captures the LBO-specific stepwise debt reduction, either with predetermined or cash-flow dependent (cash sweep) principal payments, and thus allows for dynamic redemption. These...

The internal rate of return (IRR) is still a widespread criterion for investment decisions, although many pitfalls are well known. This paper provides evidence for another, more fundamental, dark side of IRR: Based on a dynamic model of optimal capital structure with endogenous bankruptcy...

Koziol (2014) derives a simple adjusted WACC equation for firm valuation that takes default probability, possible loss of future tax savings, and the potential costs of financial distress into account. In this note we show that the derivation of the adjusted formula rests on an assumption that,...

The tax shield as present value of debt-related tax savings plays an important role in firm valuation. Driving the risk of future debt levels, the firm's strategy to adjust the absolute debt level to future changes of the firm value, labeled as (re-) financing policy, affects the value of tax...

This paper aims to shed light on the alleged contradiction between the observed conglomerate discount and a value creating effect of diversification itself. For this reason, we apply endogenous switching regressions on a sample of 51,878 US-firm years recorded over the years 1992-2012 in order...

In this paper we expand the Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) framework for the valuation of an unlevered fi rm when the free cash flows are modeled by an arithmetic Brownian motion (ABM). We approximate the ABM by a binomial lattice in order to keep the typical time discrete framework of the DCF...

The tax shield as present value of debt-related tax savings plays an important role in firm valuation. Driving the risk of future debt levels, the firm's strategy to adjust the absolute debt level to future changes of the firm value, labeled as (re-)financing policy, affects the value of tax...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze specific levers of value creation in small and mid-size private equity deals. Private equity firms add value through various types of value creation measures in their portfolio firms to achieve abnormal returns. Established literature has shown...