Purpose – The primary purpose of this paper is to test the prediction that overpricing drives merger waves. Design/methodology/approach – The authors supplement proxies of overpricing from the existing literature such as subsequent under-performance, the form of consideration/financing and...

Purpose –Researchers suspect that the overvaluation of equity issuing acquirers is a major cause of their subsequent post-event underperformance. Definitive conclusions regarding this overpricing hypothesis have not been possible since indicators of overpricing such as the book-to-market ratio...

The board of directors is considered pivotal in a company's corporate governance architecture. However, the board is just one of several governance mechanisms. External shareholders may be more concerned with the overall monitoring of management provided by the market for corporate control,...

Firms’ bankruptcy is a problem not only related to companies but also affects social welfare. Analysing a matched sample of bankrupt and healthy unlisted companies from a code law institutional setting (Spain), this paper has three main objectives: it aims to demonstrate that bankrupt firms...

The outcome of a bankruptcy procedure – ‘liquidation’ or ‘reorganization’ – has many legal, economic and social consequences for stakeholders of financial distressed companies. The objective of this paper is to show whether financial information integrity is a determinant for a...

Purpose – Using the most recent observations (2005-2011) from a sample of UK listed companies, This paper aims to investigate whether Big 4 audit firms exhibit a “fee premium” and, if this is the case, whether the premium is related to the delivery of a better audit service....