This paper examines minority squeeze-outs and their regulation in Germany, a country where majority shareholders have extensively used this tool since its introduction in 2002. Using unique data on court rulings and compensations, we analyze a sample of 324 squeeze-outs of publicly listed...

Empirical evidence is offered about the change in ownership structure following Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) and its impact on the long-term stock performance of family-owned firms in Germany. The data analyzed include 105 IPOs of founding family-owned firms floated between January 1970 and...

This paper examines the unification of non-voting preference shares into a one share-one vote structure using a sample of all German dual-class companies from 1987 until 2003. We test several hypotheses with regard to the reasons for the abolition of preference shares. First, as the separation...

In this study we analyze the evolution of ownership, control, and performance in German founding-family-owned firms over the last century. We employ a hand-collected matched sample of German stock companies founded before World War I and still in existence in 2003. Comparing family-owned and...

This paper investigates the market timing abilities of private equity fund managers using a unique set of detailed cash-flow data. We show that investment timing has an impact on the performance of venture capital funds. Surprisingly, divestment timing has no such impact on returns. For...

La Porta et al. have shown that differences among countries in legal codes and enforcement of investor protection account for much of the disparity in the size and development of their financial markets. According to their empirical measure of shareholder protection, Germany scores only one out...

This paper studies short- and long-run effects of disclosure of compliance with the German Corporate Governance Code. First, we present an analysis of firms' compliance with the Code. Second, event study results suggest that aggregate market and firm values are unaffected, although there was...

Our study examines private benefits of control in founding-family owned firms, by analyzing a unique sample of 105 IPOs of family firms on German stock exchanges from 1970 to 2011. First, we show that substantial private benefits of control exist in these firms and we empirically determine the...