National Repository of Grey Literature 26 records found  1 - 10nextend  jump to record: Search took 0.00 seconds. 
M&A activity and the capital structure of target firms
Flannery, M. J. ; Hanousek, Jan ; Shamshur, Anastasiya ; Trešl, Jiří
Using a large sample of European acquisitions, we find that acquired firms substantially close the gap between their actual and optimal leverage ratios. The bulk of this adjustment occurs quite rapidly – within a year of the acquisition. The typical over-levered firm adjusts its debtto-assets ratio from 34.4% in the year before acquisition to 20% in the year after. (The adjustment is smaller, but still quite rapid, for targets that had been under-leveraged.) These adjustments occur primarily through debt issuances or retirements. We also investigate whether target firms’ pre-merger leverage contributes to the probability of them being acquired. We find that firms further away from their optimal leverage are more likely to be acquired: for an average firm, an increase in the absolute leverage deviation from 1% to 10% of total assets increases the probability of being acquired by 4.1% to 5.6% (The larger effect applies to overleveraged firms.) Overall, our results provide support for the trade-off theory of capital structure and suggest that financial synergies have a significant role in the typical European acquisition decision.
Corporate profitability and the global persistence of corruption
Ferris, S. P. ; Hanousek, Jan ; Trešl, Jiří
We examine the persistence of corporate corruption for a sample of privately-held firms from 12 Central and Eastern European countries over the period 2001 to 2015. Creating a proxy for corporate corruption based on a firm’s internal inefficiency, we find that corruption enhances a firm’s profitability. A channel analysis further reveals that inflating staff costs is the most common approach by which firms divert funds to finance corruption. We conclude that corruption persists because of its ability to improve a firm’s return on assets, which we refer to as the Corporate Advantage Hypothesis.
Firm life cycle and cost of debt
Amin, A. ; Bowler, B. ; Hasan, M. M. ; Lobo, G. L. ; Trešl, Jiří
This paper examines the relation between the corporate life cycle and lending spreads. Using a sample of 20,307 firm-loan observations spanning 5,076 publicly traded U.S. firms, we find that lending spreads follow a U-shape pattern across the life cycle phases. This pattern is in addition to the variation explained by typical controls. In a multivariate analysis, we find that firms in the introduction and decline phases pay lending spreads that are greater than firms in the mature phase (differences of 6 percent and 12 percent, respectively). We explore omitted variables bias and instrumental variable estimation in robustness testing and find that the shape pattern persists. Our findings are consistent with theoretical predictions regarding the relationship between the corporate life cycle and various lending risks.
Intra-industry transfer of information inferred from trading volume
Brushko, Iuliia ; Ferris, S. P. ; Hanousek, Jan ; Trešl, Jiří
This study examines the responsiveness of trading volume to a firm’s earnings announcements. We find that the volume and earnings surprise information generated at the first earnings announcement within an industry help to explain the stock returns of the non-announcing firm. Specifically, it explains their equity performance at the time of the first industry announcement and then again after their own earnings announcement. These results provide novel insights into how earnings announcements contain both firm specific as well as industry information that is value relevant for investors.
Firm efficiency, foreign ownership and CEO gender in corrupt environments
Hanousek, Jan ; Shamshur, Anastasiya ; Trešl, Jiří
We study the effects of corruption on firm efficiency using a unique dataset of private firms from 14 Central and Eastern European countries from 2000 to 2013. We find that an environment characterized by a high level of corruption has an adverse effect on firm efficiency. This effect is stronger for firms with a lower propensity to behave corruptly, such as foreign-controlled firms and firms managed by female CEOs, while local firms and firms with male CEOs are not disadvantaged. We also find that an environment characterized by considerable heterogeneity in the perception of corruption is associated with an increase in firm efficiency. This effect is particularly strong for foreign-controlled firms from low corruption countries, while no effect is observed for firms managed by a female CEO.
Asymmetries in the firm’s use of debt to changing market values
Ferris, S. P. ; Hanousek, Jan ; Shamshur, Anastasiya ; Trešl, Jiří
Using a large sample of U.S. firms over the period, 1984 to 2013, this study examines the relation between market and book leverage ratios. Unlike Welch (2004) who contends that changes in market leverage do not induce adjustments in book leverage, we find an asymmetric effect. That is, firms adjust their book leverage relative to market leverage only when the changes in market leverage are due to increases in the value of the firm’s equity. No adjustment is observed when firm equity values decrease. We observe a number of interesting differences between those firms that make large and small capital structure adjustments in response to changing equity prices. Our results are consistent with Barclay, Morellec and Smith (2006) who argue that the optimal level of debt decreases in the presence of corporate growth options.
To bribe or not to bribe? Corruption uncertainty and corporate practices
Hanousek, Jan ; Shamshur, Anastasiya ; Trešl, Jiří
Using a large sample of private firms over the period from 2001 to 2013, we study the effect of corruption uncertainty on corporate investments and cash holdings. We find that a higher uncertainty about the level of corruption is associated with lower corporate investments and lower cash holdings. These results are sensitive to the ownership structure of a firm. Firms with no foreign majority ownership appear to be more sensitive to corruption-induced uncertainty than majority-controlled foreign firms. They significantly decrease their investments and cash holdings. We hypothesize that they move their cash off-balance-sheet to create cash reserves as the uncertainty of when, whom, and how much to bribe increases.

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