运筹帷幄中的商务谈判秘笈

“有朋自远方来,不亦乐乎？”对待客人,热情、周到是中国人的传统美德。不过,仅仅有热情的初衷是不够的,如果到访的是外国朋友,就不能简单地套用在国内的习惯了,应该照顾对方的风俗传统,作出更精心的安排。     

投资谈判中的法律风险

达成基本的投资意向后,投资双方需要就投资金额和投资整合过程等进行具体的谈判和协商。达到双赢固然是大家所乐见的局面,但隐藏在白纸黑字下的风险却也需谨慎对待。     

Budget negotiations in multi-period settings

Budgets are typically set through a negotiation process that is repeated in successive periods, often between the same superior and subordinate. Despite this, little is known about budget negotiations in multi-period settings. Temporal interdependence is a fundamental aspect of budget negotiations in multi-period settings, and it refers to the fact that in multi-period budget settings, superiors’ (subordinates’) decisions and actions in one period can be influenced by subordinates’ (superiors’) decisions and actions in earlier periods and, in turn, can influence subordinates’ (superiors’) decisions and actions in later periods. We report the results of an experiment that addresses two issues related to temporal interdependence.     

Merger negotiations and the toehold puzzle

The substantial control premium typically observed in corporate takeovers makes a compelling case for acquiring target shares (a toehold) in the market prior to launching a bid. Moreover, auction theory suggests that toehold bidding may yield a competitive advantage over rival bidders. Nevertheless, with a sample exceeding 10,000 initial control bids for US public targets, we show that toehold bidding has declined steadily since the early 1980s and is now surprisingly rare. At the same time, the average toehold is large when it occurs (20%), and toeholds are the norm in hostile bids. To explain these puzzling observations, we develop and test a two-stage takeover model where attempted merger negotiations are followed by open auction. With optimal bidding, a toehold imposes a cost on target management, causing some targets to (rationally) reject merger negotiations. Optimal toeholds are therefore either zero (to avoid rejection costs) or greater than a threshold (so that toehold benefits offset rejection costs). The toehold threshold estimate averages 9% across initial bidders, reflecting in part the bidder's opportunity loss of a merger termination agreement. In the presence of market liquidity costs, a threshold of this size may well induce a broad range of bidders to select zero toehold. As predicted, the probability of toehold bidding decreases, and the toehold size increases, with the threshold estimate. The model also predicts a relatively high frequency of toehold bidding in hostile bids, as observed. Overall, our test results are consistent with rational bidder behavior with respect to the toehold decision.     

The hidden challenge of cross-border negotiations

Cultural differences can influence business negotiations in unexpected ways, as many a hapless deal maker has learned. But the differences extend well beyond surface behaviors, such as proper table manners and the exchange of business cards--and even beyond deeper cultural characteristics, such as attitudes about relationships and deadlines. Indeed, there's another, equally treacherous aspect to cross-border negotiation: the ways that people from different regions come to agreement, or the processes involved in negotiations. Decision-making and governance processes can vary widely from culture to culture, not only in terms of legal technicalities but also in terms of the behaviors and core beliefs that drive them. Numerous promising deals have failed because people ignored or underestimated the powerful differences in process across cultures. In this article, James Sebenius offers ways in which negotiators can prepare for such cultural differences. A useful approach, he says, is to map out the decision-making process--including who's involved, what formal and informal roles people play, and how a resolution is actually reached. With that knowledge, you can design a strategy that anticipates obstacles before they arise. Governance and decision-making processes can take devilishly unexpected forms as you cross borders. But by designing your strategy and tactics so that you're reaching all the right people, you increase your chances of striking a sustainable deal. Those negotiations that might otherwise have failed because people ignored or underestimated powerful disparities in process will, in the end, yield a meaningful yes.     

Which Extreme Values Are Really Extreme?

We define the extreme values of any random sample of size nfrom a distribution function F as the observations exceedinga threshold and following a type of generalized Pareto distribution(GPD) involving the tail index of F. The threshold is the orderstatistic that minimizes a Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic betweenthe empirical distribution of the corresponding largest observationsand the corresponding GPD. To formalize the definition we usea semiparametric bootstrap to test the corresponding GPD approximation.Finally, we use our methodology to estimate the tail index andvalue at risk (VaR) of some financial indexes of major stockmarkets.     

Equity grants to target CEOs during deal negotiations

I investigate the determinants and consequences of granting equity to the target's Chief Executive Officer (CEO) during deal negotiations. These negotiation grants likely reflect information about the acquisition, benefit from the deal premium, and provide more timely bargaining incentives. I find that CEOs are more likely to receive equity during negotiations when they negotiate for the target, particularly when the target has more bargaining power. This suggests that boards use equity to enhance bargaining incentives for CEOs with the most influence over deal price. I find limited evidence that negotiation grants are used as compensation and no evidence that they have a material adverse effect on shareholders.     

Infrequent Extreme Risks

The main tools and concepts of financial and actuarial theory are designed to handle standard, or even small risks. The aim of this paper is to reconsider some selected financial problems, in a setup including infrequent extreme risks. We first consider investors maximizing the expected utility function of their future wealth, and we establish the necessary and sufficient conditions on the utility function to ensure the existence of a non degenerate demand for assets with extreme risks. This new class of utility functions, called LIRA, does not contain the classical HARA and CARA utility functions, which are not adequate in this framework. Then we discuss the corresponding asset supply-demand equilibrium model.     

探讨商务英语在国际商务谈判中的运用(英文)

当前的国际经济一体化发展步伐逐渐加快,各行各业的企业和组织之间的合作交流日渐增多,其中涉及到不少跨国商务谈判。由于各个国家之间的企业经济效益为最终目标,追求他们的经济利益,因此在资源有限的情况下,他们的经济利益必然有冲突,这样就让彼此间商务谈判显得尤为重要。     

Privatization as an agency problem: Auctions versus private negotiations

This paper investigates the design of privatization mechanisms in emerging market economies characterized by political constraints that limit the set of viable privatization options. Our objective is to explain the striking diversity of mechanisms observed in practice and the frequent use of an apparently sub-optimal privatization mechanism: private negotiations.     

Stock option grants to target CEOs during private merger negotiations

Unscheduled stock options to target chief executive officers (CEOs) are a nontrivial phenomenon during private merger negotiations. In 920 acquisition bids during 1999-2007, over 13% of targets grant them. These options substitute for golden parachutes and compensate target CEOs for the benefits they forfeit because of the merger. Targets granting unscheduled options are more likely to be acquired but they earn lower premiums. Consequently, deal value drops by $62 for every dollar target CEOs receive from unscheduled options. Conversely, acquirers of targets offering these awards experience higher returns. Therefore, deals involving unscheduled grants exhibit a transfer of wealth from target shareholders to bidder shareholders.     

Extreme downside risk and market turbulence

We investigate the dynamics of the relationship between returns and extreme downside risk in different states of the market by combining the framework of Bali et al. [Is there an intertemporal relation between downside risk and expected returns? Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 2009, 44, 883–909] with a Markov switching mechanism. We show that the risk-return relationship identified by Bali et al. (2009) is highly significant in the low volatility state but disappears during periods of market turbulence. This is puzzling since it is during such periods that downside risk should be most prominent. We show that the absence of the risk-return relationship in the high volatility state is due to leverage and volatility feedback effects arising from increased persistence in volatility. To better filter out these effects, we propose a simple modification that yields a positive tail risk-return relationship in all states of market volatility.     

Extreme Value Theory and Archimedean Copulas

Using the language of copulas, we generalize the famous Fisher-Tippett Theorem of extreme value theory to the case with sequences of dependent random variables. The dependence structure is modelled using archimedean copulas. This generalization enables to study the behaviour of the maxima of dependent random sequences.     

Extreme dependence of multivariate catastrophic losses

Natural catastrophes cause insurance losses in several different lines of business. An approach to modelling the dependence in loss severities is to assume that they are related to the intensity of the natural disaster. In this paper we introduce a factor model and investigate the extreme dependence. We derive a specific extreme dependence structure when considering an heavy-tailed intensity. Estimation procedures are presented and their moderate sample properties are compared in a simulation study. We also motivate our approach by an illustrative example from storm insurance.     

Extreme Correlation of International Equity Markets

Testing the hypothesis that international equity market correlation increases in volatile times is a difficult exercise and misleading results have often been reported in the past because of a spurious relationship between correlation and volatility. Using "extreme value theory" to model the multivariate distribution tails, we derive the distribution of extreme correlation for a wide class of return distributions. Empirically, we reject the null hypothesis of multivariate normality for the negative tail, but not for the positive tail. We also find that correlation is not related to market volatility per se but to the market trend. Correlation increases in bear markets, but not in bull markets.     

Extreme Risk Measures for International REIT Markets

Extreme risks associated with extraordinary market conditions are catastrophic for all investors. The ongoing financial crisis has perfectly exemplified this point. Surprisingly, there are few studies exploring this issue for REITs. This study aims to close the knowledge gap. We conduct a comprehensive study by utilizing all three methodological categories to examine their forecasting performances of VaR and ES for nine major global REIT markets. Our findings indicate that there is no universally adequate method to model extreme risks across global markets. Also, estimating risks for the stock and REIT markets may require different methods. In addition, we compare the risk profiles between the stock and REIT markets, and find that the extreme risks for REITs are generally higher than those of stock markets. The fluctuations of risk levels are well synchronized between the two types of markets. The current crisis has significantly increased the extreme risk exposure for both REIT and stock investors. In all, our results have significant implications for REIT risk management, portfolio selection, and evaluation.     

Extreme downside risk and expected stock returns

We propose a measure for extreme downside risk (EDR) to investigate whether bearing such a risk is rewarded by higher expected stock returns. By constructing an EDR proxy with the left tail index in the classical generalized extreme value distribution, we document a significantly positive EDR premium in cross-section of stock returns even after controlling for market, size, value, momentum, and liquidity effects. The EDR premium is more prominent among glamor stocks and when high market returns are expected. High-EDR stocks are generally characterized by high idiosyncratic risk, large downside beta, lower coskewness and cokurtosis, and high bankruptcy risk. The EDR premium persists after these characteristics are controlled for. Although Value at Risk (VaR) plays a significant role in explaining the EDR premium, it cannot completely subsume the EDR effect.     

Extreme returns: The case of currencies

Financial market crashes can occur even in the absence of news. This paper highlights four properties of price-contingent trading that increase the frequency of such events. Price-contingent trading is common across financial market, since it includes algorithmic trading, technical trading, and dynamic option hedging. The four properties we consider are: (1) high kurtosis in the distribution of order sizes; (2) clustering of trades within the day; (3) clustering of trades at certain prices; and (4) feedback between trading and returns. The paper estimates the relative importance of these factors using data from the foreign exchange market. Calibrated simulations indicate that interactions among these factors are at least as important as any single one. Among individual factors, the orders’ size distribution and feedback effects have the strongest influence. Overall, price-contingent trading could account for half of realized excess kurtosis. The paper suggests that extreme returns unaccompanied by news are statistically inevitable in the presence of price-contingent trading.