Dividend initiations are an economically significant event that has important implications for a firm's future financial capacity. Given the market's expectation of a consistent payout, managers of IPO firms must approach the initial dividend decision cautiously. We compare the long run...

This paper examines the initial and long-run performance of 130 Australian mining IPOs issued from 1979 to 1990. The results show an average underpricing of 107.18%, significantly higher than that previously documented for industrial firms. The time lapse between prospectus registration and...

In a relatively less litigious environment like Australia, it is common to find IPO firms that voluntarily provide forecasts in their prospectus. Using 158 Australian industrial IPOs listed from 1991 to 1997, we examine the impact of the disclosure and accuracy of earnings and dividend forecasts...

Recent media releases have placed enormous strains on the credibility of the underwriting industry. It has been alleged that underwriters in the US and UK collude and fix underwriting fees. In contrast to recent evidence on the underwriting spread in the US (Chen and Ritter, 2000), we find that...

We examine the link between the accuracy of consensus analysts' dividend forecasts, earnings predictability and dividend policies of firms in 39 countries from 1995 to 2004. For firms that display stronger dividend smoothing, as modeled by Lintner (1956), there is a lower correlation between...

We examine whether hedge fund activists correct inefficient R&D investment and create long-term value at their targets. Using an endogenous growth model to estimate the efficient level of R&D investment, we find firms targeted by activists are overinvesting in R&D on average, with both the...

As the incidence of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) continues to escalate, understanding the factors that systematically affect earnings predictability becomes increasingly important. This paper examines how changes in business characteristics and forecasting environment of merging firms affect...

We investigate the existence of strategic cross-fund subsidization in SRI fund families. For asample of SRI fund families domiciled in the U.S., we find evidence of cross-fund subsidizationon performance where winning funds are subsidized by peer losing funds. However, there isno evidence of...

This paper examines the initiation of analyst coverage of IPO firms in the presence of management forecasts. For a sample of 763 Australian IPOs from 1992 to 2004, we find firms that provide a management forecast in the prospectus are more likely to receive analyst coverage, after correcting for...