An intense debate on the use of limited-voting shares developed in the UK during the 1950s. Using a unique hand-collected dataset, we show that negative news coverage of limited-voting shares is associated with an increase in the relative price of voting and limited-voting shares (the voting...

We explore the relation between family ownership and corporate investment policy. Our analysis centers on two incentives, risk aversion and extended investment horizons, which potentially influence the level and type of investments that family firms undertake. We find that family firms devote...

We consider an incumbent who wishes to sell equity to outsiders at an IPO to implement his firm’s project. He may be talented (lower cost of effort, comparative advantage in project-implementation) or untalented. The project may have high (intrinsically more valuable, but showing less signs of...

This paper examines the unification of non-voting preference shares into a one share-one vote structure using a sample of all German dual-class companies from 1987 until 2003. We test several hypotheses with regard to the reasons for the abolition of preference shares. First, as the separation...

Dual-class share unifications have typically been argued to be beneficial for voting shareholders, who are usually compensated for the loss of their superior voting privileges. However, no covenants exist that make this compensation mandatory for voting shareholders. In this paper, we examine a...