This paper explores whether private equity firms that are new to the industry take excessive risks relative to funds from established firms. We use differences between the implicit incentives of managers of experienced and of novice funds as identification strategy. We find that novice funds...

This paper examines two prominent approaches to design efficient mechanisms for debt renegotiation with dispersed bondholders: debt exchange offers that promise enhanced liquidation rights to a restricted number of tendering bondholders (favored under U.S. law), and collective action clauses...

Debt with many creditors is analyzed in a continuous-time pricing model of the levered firm in the presence of corporate taxes. We specifically allow for debtor opportunism in form of repeated strategic renegotiation offers and default threats. Dispersed creditors will only accept coupon...

We develop a two-sided asymmetric information model of asset sales that incorporates the key differences from mergers and allows the information held by each party to be impounded in the transaction. Buyer information is conveyed through a first-stage competitive auction. A seller with...

This paper compares the success of venture capital investments in the United States and in Europe by analyzing individual venture-backed companies and the value generated within the stage financing process. We document that US venture capitalists generate significantly more value with their...

This paper shows that the pooling of financial resources in an internal capital market may magnify financial distress situations. This effect, which is closely related to the well-known debt overhang phenomenon, arises when there is a illiquidity in one part of the conglomerate, which then...

In a market-based financial system, credit is held by dispersed creditors, and out-of-court renegotiation of debt is more likely to fail because of hold-out problems; in a bank-based system, out-of-court renegotiation stands good chances to succeed. Since out-of-court renegotiation is a...

We present a dynamic model of venture capital financing, described as a sequential investment problem with uncertain outcome. Each venture has to pass a sequence of milestones, and there is a chance of terminal failure in each milestone. The investors decide sequentially about the speed of the...

This paper analyzes optimal financial contracts for an incumbent and potential entrant accounting for prospective asset mergers. Exercising a first-mover advantage, the incumbent increases his share of surplus by issuing public debt that appreciates in the event of merger. Incumbent debt reduces...