This article details major privatization deals executed during 2011 and the first half of 2012 and surveys trends shaping the privatization landscape worldwide. We document several important facts, including the following: Governments raised only $94.4 billion (€68.2 billion) through...

This article details major privatization deals executed during 2010 and the first half of 2011 and surveys trends shaping the privatization landscape worldwide. We document several important facts, including the following: Governments raised a record $213.6 billion (€159.9 billion) through...

Several signaling models predict that firms underprice their initial offerings of equity deeply so that they can subsequently issue seasoned equity at more favorable terms. We test the implications of those models. We find a positive relation between IPO underpricing and the possibility of and...

Recent evidences indicate that privatization leads to enormous benefits to society almost without undesirable costs. However, stakeholders of privatization seem not to satisfy the resulting performance of privatized firms. Using data from 202 firms privatized from 37 countries during the period...

This study presents the first comprehensive compilation of the number of people around the world who own shares directly and indirectly. We document that at least 310 million people in 59 countries (24 developed and 35 emerging market nations) own stock directly [Table 1]. Nearly 173 million of...

Frequently the largest equity offerings in the world, share-issue privatizations (SIPs) are sometimes conducted entirely on domestic exchanges and are sometimes cross-listed on foreign exchanges. In this paper, we examine the determinants of a privatizing government's actions regarding whether...

This study describes the Indian corporate governance system and examines how the system has both supported and held back India's ascent to the top ranks of the world's economies. While on paper the country's legal system provides some of the best investor protection in the world, enforcement is...

This paper provides support for the certification role of venture capitalists in initial public offerings. Consistent with the certification hypothesis, a comparison of venture capital backed IPOs with a matched control sample of nonventure capital backed IPOs from 1983 through 1987 matched as...

Newly privatized firms increase dividends after divestment, and also pay significantly higher dividends compared to always-private firms. We examine a sample of 83,468 firm-years (358 privatized and 4,894 always-private firms) across 26 countries and show that the dividend premium is...

The study described in this Note compared the pre- and post-privatization performance of 61 companies in 18 countries and 32 industries. These companies were sold to the public through a share issue and thus their comparable pre- and post-issue financial and accounting data could be obtained...