This paper studies the motive of issuing floating-priced convertibles or warrants, known as death spirals, in a country where private benefit of control is high. Using a total of 199 death spiral issuances by public firms listed in the Korea Stock Exchange during 1998–2006, we find a number of...

In the last months of 1997, the value of the Korean currency lost over half its value against the dollar, and the ruling party was swept from power in presidential elections. One of the fundamental causes of this national economic crisis was the widespread failure of Korean companies to earn...

According to the prior literature, family executives of family-controlled firms receive lower compensation than non-family executives. One of the key driving forces behind this is the existence of family members who are not involved in management, but own significant fraction of shares and...

Outside directors and audit committees are widely considered to be central elements of good corporate governance. We use a 1999 Korean law as an exogenous shock to assess how board structure affects firm market value. The law mandates 50% outside directors and an audit committee for large public...

This paper investigates whether foreign institutional investors in emerging markets can enhance shareholder value. We pay special attention to two dimensions of investor heterogeneity: whether an investor declares itself as an activist, and whether an investor comes from a country with a strong...

With the removal of statute-based anti-takeover provisions during the aftermath of Asian crisis, a significant number of Korean firms started to introduce charter-based measures. In this paper, we make use of this unique situation where firm-level anti-takeover provisions (ATP) vary over time...

We study an agency problem in private universities — the conflict between controlling families and other stakeholders. We investigate whether universities over which controlling families have disproportionately significant power relative to the amount of funds they contribute, that is,...