Liquidating large security positions strategically: a pragmatic and empirical approach

This article investigates static liquidation strategies for large security positions in illiquid markets. Under the assumption that the liquidation horizon is given exogenously, a discretionary liquidity trader solves for the optimal sales trajectory so as to maximize an objective function that considers the expected liquidation revenues and their standard deviation. Although existing literature tends to focus on theoretical aspects with the intention of deriving closed-form solutions for special types of market impact functions, this article considers a framework that is able to capture important empirical phenomena in the stock market, such as the intraday U-shaped pattern of price impact and the resiliency of the order book. The new model is very flexible since it allows for liquidation intervals of varying length and foregoes the assumption of constant speed of trading. Examples with real-world order book data demonstrate how the setup can be implemented numerically and provide deeper insight into relevant properties of the model.     

Family Firms

We present a model of succession in a firm owned and managed by its founder. The founder decides between hiring a professional manager or leaving management to his heir, as well as on what fraction of the company to float on the stock exchange. We assume that a professional is a better manager than the heir, and describe how the founder's decision is shaped by the legal environment. This theory of separation of ownership from management includes the Anglo‐Saxon and the Continental European patterns of corporate governance as special cases, and generates additional empirical predictions consistent with cross‐country evidence.     

Marketing Package Holidays

Package holidays form a significant part of tourism and are a comparatively recent one too. This article examines some of the marketing implications. It argues that the package tour operators have created a distinct special kind of tourism product which has been responsive to the marketing techniques available to manufacturers of consumer goods.     

One Share - One Vote: the Theory

The theoretical literature on security-voting structure canbe organized around three questions: What impact do nonvotingshares have on takeover outcomes? How does disproportional votingpower affect the incentives of blockholders? What are the repercussionsof mandating one share - one vote for firms' financing and ownershipchoices? Overall, the costs and benefits of separating cashflow and votes reflect the fundamental governance trade offbetween disempowering blockholders and empowering managers.It is therefore an open question whether mandating one share- one vote would improve the quality of corporate governance,notably in systems that so far relied on active owners.     

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Agency Conflicts in Public and Negotiated Transfers of Corporate Control

We analyze control transfers in firms with a dominant minority blockholder and otherwise dispersed owners, and show that the transaction mode is important. Negotiated block trades preserve a low level of ownership concentration, inducing more inefficient extraction of private benefits. In contrast, public acquisitions increase ownership concentration, resulting in fewer private benefits and higher firm value. Within our model, the incumbent and new controlling party prefer to trade the block because of the dispersed shareholders' free-riding behavior. We also explore the regulatory implications of this agency problem and its impact on the terms of block trades.