This paper unveils the diversity in lock-in agreements of firms listed on the Nouveau Marche stock exchange in France. We give the main economic reasons why shareholders adopt lock-in agreements that are more stringent than legally required. We relate the abnormal returns and the abnormal volume...

German firms pay out a lower proportion of their cash flows than UK and US firms. However, on a published profits basis, the pattern is reversed.Company law provisions and accounting policies account for these conflicting results. A partial adjustment model is used to estimate the implicit...

In this paper, we analyse the short-term wealth effects of large (intra)European takeover bids. We find large announcement effects of 9% for target firms and a cumulative abnormal return that includes the price run-up over the two-month period prior to the announcement date of 23%. However, the...

This paper investigates the market's reaction to UK insider transactions and analyzes whether the reaction depends on the firm's ownership. There are three major findings. First, differences in regulation between the UK and US, in particular the speedier reporting of trades in the UK, may...

German firms pay out a lower proportion of their cash flows, but a higher proportion of their published profits than UK and US firms. We estimate partial adjustment models and report two major findings. First, German firms base their dividend decisions on cash flows rather than published...

This paper provides an overview of the German corporate governance system. We review the governance role of large shareholders, creditors, the product market and the supervisory board. We also discuss the importance of mergers and acquisitions, the market in block trades, and the lack of a...

This paper analyses the decision to change the dividend for a panel of German firms from 1984 to 1994. The period captures an economic boom which followed by a recession. This study comes up with two findings which refine the results by Lintner (1956) and Miller and Modigliani (1961). First, the...

As institutional investors are the largest shareholders in most listed UK firms, one expects them to monitor the firms they invest in. However, there is mounting empirical evidence which suggests that they do not perform any monitoring. This paper provides a new test on whether UK institutional...

This paper studies the short- and long-run share price performance of firms that have gone public on the Euro New Markets (EuroNMs) since their foundation in 1996/97. The initial and long-run returns are remarkable in four ways. First, underpricing is on average 2-3 times higher than that on the...

This paper examines the impact of venture-capital (VC) backing on the characteristics of voluntary lock-in agreements entered into by the existing shareholders of UK IPOs, and on the abnormal returns around the expiry of the directors' lock-in agreements. Overall, we find that venture-capital...