In the French language, the word comptabiliteacute (accounting) first appeared in the middle of the eighteenth century. It was used in the Royal finances and its first meaning was that of accountability. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, or thereabouts, the uses of the word evolved...

Following Colbert's Ordonnance of 1673, most of whose provisions were reiterated in the Code de Commerce, 1807 and the Law of Bankruptcy, 1838, traders in France were under a legal obligation to keep accounts of their business activities. In the event of bankruptcy, traders were potentially...

Our study investigates by which channels IPO underpricing impacts post-listing liquidity. Using a sample of IPOs undertaken on Euronext with diverse mechanisms, we show that when ownership structure is not influenced by initial underpricing, this underpricing still has a positive impact on...

This paper examines open market stock repurchases in France. We find a positive average market reaction to the repurchase announcement. However, the magnitude of the price reaction is found to depend on a number of corporate governance structure measures. The positive aspects of the announcement...

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...

Reviews the book 'Financial Analysis and Corporate Strategy,' by Mark Grinblatt and Sheridan Titman.

We consider an auction setting, in a symmetric information framework, in which bidders, even if they fail to obtain the good, care about the price paid by the winner. We prove that the outcome of the first-price auction is not affected by identity-independent price externalities, while the...

This paper investigates the determinants of the cash holdings of French firms over the period 1998- 2002, using the trade-off theory and the pecking order theory. We show that French firms increase their cash level when their activities are risky and the levels of their cash flow are high, and...

What determines securitization levels, and should they be regulated? To address these questions we develop a model where originators can exert unobservable effort to increase expected asset quality, subsequently having private information regarding quality when selling ABS to rational investors....

In the Basel regulation the required capital of a financial institution is based on conditional measures of the risk of its future equity value such as Value-at-Risk, or Expected Shortfall. In Basel 2 the uncertainty on this equity value is captured by means of changes in asset prices (market...