In the past 30 years, major changes have occurred not only in the kinds of securities issued, but also in the "way" securities are issued and in the national markets "where" they are issued. Traditional registered offerings have been partly displaced by shelf registered offerings and Rule 144A...

A number of studies have reported value discounts for listed companies in countries that provide weak legal protection to minority shareholders. Such studies typically attribute these discounts to the ability, and the well-documented tendency, of controlling shareholders to extract a...