The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between investor protection and corporate valuation. “Tunneling effects” which means that the controlling shareholders enrich themselves by expropriating the rights and interests of minor shareholders are usually referred in recent...

Despite the longstanding insider trading debate, there is little empirical research on insider trading laws, especially in a comparative context. The article attempts to fill that gap. I find that countries with more prohibitive insider trading laws have more diffuse equity ownership, more...

The "law matters" thesis implies countries will not develop a robust stock market or diffuse corporate ownership structures unless laws are in place that curtail the extraction of private benefits of control by large shareholders and address information asymmetries from which outside investors...

Law and Finance theory stresses the importance of shareholder rights for the reliability and development of capital markets. Many European Parliaments picked up this corporate governance issue. We expand the analysis of Lele and Siems (2007) and show that the number of shareholder rights grew...

Over recent years, a number of regulators have launched proposals to expand the obligation to disclose major share ownership in listed companies. This paper shows that these are not stand-alone developments. Using a unique dataset comprising data from 25 countries over 11 years (1995-2005) and...

How important are active independent shareholders in a framework for sound corporate governance? Hedge funds, institutional investors, the "Warren Buffets" of the world, and other share blockholders can conceivably guard against abusive behavior by monitoring a firm's activities. As India enters...

This note presents my position regarding the hidden ownership schemes currently employed by the Schaeffler group to build up stakes in Continental AG in preparation for an unsolicited surprise cash-bid for Continental's shares. It summarizes the information publicly available on the Schaeffler /...

Competition between State-owned Enterprises ('SOEs') and foreign companies has intensified as China has liberalised market access in order to fulfill its commitments for entry to the WTO. To help SOEs meet the challenge of increasing international competition, the Chinese government has adopted...

This article brings into focus the impact of employee buyouts on corporate governance ten years after the large-scale privatization in Russia. The analysis shows that although employee buyouts have helped to reduce unemployment and prevent major social conflicts, it otherwise had a negative...

I analyze the allocation of the power to decide on hostile takeovers between directors and shareholders. My contribution is to show who actually has power in a takeover and what factors are at work to give such power. Although directors are traditionally considered to be in charge in deciding...