Club deals in leveraged buyouts

We analyze the pricing and characteristics of club deal leveraged buyouts (LBOs)—those in which two or more private equity partnerships jointly conduct an LBO. Using a comprehensive sample of completed LBOs of U.S. publicly traded targets conducted by prominent private equity firms, we find that target shareholders receive approximately 10% less of pre-bid firm equity value, or roughly 40% lower premiums, in club deals compared to sole-sponsored LBOs. This result is concentrated before 2006 and in target firms with low institutional ownership. These results are robust to controls for target and deal characteristics, including size, Q, measures of risk, and time and industry fixed effects. We find little support for benign motivations for club deals based on capital constraints, diversification motives, or the ability of clubs to obtain favorable debt amounts or prices, but it is possible that the lower pricing of club deals is an inadvertent byproduct of an unobserved benign motivation for club formation.     

Revisiting acquirer returns: Evidence from unanticipated deals

This paper examines the implications of market anticipation of impending merger and acquisition (M&A) deals on the assessment of acquirer wealth effects through event study methods. We find evidence suggesting that prior studies have understated the gains to acquirers. The documented negative or near-zero abnormal returns to acquirers appears to be confined to sub-samples of highly-anticipated deals. By contrast, unanticipated acquirers gain significantly from M&As, achieving average cumulative abnormal returns of 5.4% to 7.5% in the seven days around the bid announcement. Empirically, we show that market anticipation partly explains (1) the documented low returns to acquirers, (2) the positive abnormal return spillover to close rivals of acquirers, and (3) the declining returns to serial acquirers across successive deals. Overall, our study provides evidence against several stylised facts and sheds light on the puzzle that M&A activity persists despite recurrent research findings that they do not create value for acquirers.     

Option strategies: Good deals and margin calls

We provide evidence that trading frictions have an economically important impact on the execution and the profitability of option strategies that involve writing out-of-the-money put options. Margin requirements, in particular, limit the notional amount of capital that can be invested in the strategies and force investors to close down positions and realize losses. The economic effect of frictions is stronger when the investor seeks to write options more aggressively. Although margins are effective in reducing counterparty default risk, they also impose a friction that limits investors from supplying liquidity to the option market.     

Learning from repetitive acquisitions: Evidence from the time between deals

Knowledge gleaned from previous acquisitions may confer valuation expertise and other benefits. But numerous acquisitions also entail costs, due to problems of incorporating diverse units into an ever larger firm. Such benefits and costs are not directly observable from outside the firm. This article proposes a simple model to infer their relative importance, using the time between successive deals. The data requirements are minimal and allow the use of all mergers and acquisitions during 1992–2009 (more than 300,000 deals). The results provide evidence of learning gains through repetitive acquisitions, especially under CEO continuity and when successive deals are more similar.     

Bought deals: The value of underwriter certification in seasoned equity offerings

The bought deal is the predominant method of underwriting SEOs in Canada. Offer prices are set and underwriters commit to purchase offerings several days earlier for bought deals than for firm commitment issues, implying stronger underwriter certification for bought deal issues. Consistent with the certification hypothesis, this study finds a significantly smaller negative stock price reaction around the announcement of bought deals compared to firm commitment issues. Bought deals are further shown to have smaller offer price discounts and smaller underwriting fees, implying superior pricing and thus, higher quality offerings. These findings suggest that investment banks’ underwriting method of choice is informative of issue quality.     

Colonising the future: Mega-trade deals,education services and global higher education markets

This paper explores a less well-examined aspect of time in relation to higher education and the academy; that of ‘time-future’. The paper takes the case of education trade strategies being pursued by governments and allied agencies, and explores the multiple ways in which time-future is mobilised. Drawing on trade documents, government statistics, and related reports, the paper points to two time-future dynamics at work. The first dynamic focuses on the ways in which the future is imagined by strategic actors, and legitimated through creating equivalences between education trade, economic growth and prosperity. The second dynamic explores the ways in which the current round of global and regional trade negotiations colonise the future as a political resource. I reflect on how time-future is a key resource and modality of power to be claimed and cognitively shaped so as to reorient actor’s expectations towards the rhythms and demands of capitalism, and away from the temporal orders of the academy. However, efforts to commodify higher education, on the one hand, and colonise higher education futures exclusively to serve the interests of economic investors, on the other, continues to be contested. As a result, a new temporal order is yet to become common-sense, and an existing order is yet to die.     

贷来的校舍

2011年是校舍安全工程建设的最后一年,也是最为关键的一年,因为到年底一切尘埃落定后,任何可操作的技术手段,可利用的有效方法都将英雄无用武之地。而我们之所以策划这一期封面报道,源于一次偶然:在某财政内部会议上,一位财政厅长透露,该省的校舍安全工程,几乎都是靠贷款搞的!一时,众财政厅长都大倒苦水:好事难办啊!为什么像校舍安全工程这样的好事缺钱难办呢?     

关于加强电子银行建设的思考北大核心

随着信息网络化和经济全球化进程不断推进,银行业正进行着一场前所未有的技术革新和战略转型,自助银行、电话银行、网上银行、手机银行等新兴电子银行及服务应运而生,电子业务种类迅速增多,交易量快速提升,电子银行正成为打造现代商业银行核心竞争力的有力手段。本文从缓解柜面排队压力,提高集约化经营管理水平,增强客户粘性、降低客户流失率,应对日趋激烈的市场竞争等四个方面提出加强电子银行建设的必要性,从完善计量与考评体系、加强基层支行电子渠道管理、加快电子银行产品创新、加大电子银行渠道拓展、解决网银睡眠户问题、强化电子渠道成本领先优势、提高电子渠道的客户满意度等七方面提出加强电子银行建设的措施。     

Fetching better deals from creditors: Board busyness,agency relationships and the bank cost of debt

In a cross-country setting, we document that busy boards of directors (i.e., outside directors with multiple directorships) enhance a bank's financing capacity by lowering its cost of debt, which is consistent with the signalling quality hypothesis. Our analysis further reveals that this negative association is more pronounced in conventional banks than their Islamic counterparts. Possibly owning to the distinctive governance structure and the complexity of the Islamic business model, which requires closer monitoring, Muslim debtholders might depreciate a busy board of directors as it is likely to associate with lower scrutinising effectiveness. Our results provide a positive counterpoint to the negative relationship that exists between busy directors and firm performance, and contributes to understanding the indispensable role busy boards play in debt financing.     

贷款撑起的校舍——内蒙古敖汉旗校安工程探访

20之所以选择这个地方,是因为在内蒙古101个旗县中,它的财政收入排在60多位,位居中游,教育投入却排在20多位,比较靠前。以把中小学校舍建成最安全、最牢固、让人民群众最放心的建筑为最高指导方针的全国中小学校舍安全工程建设,今年年底就该完美收官了。到目前为止,它的进展程度如何,资金到位情况如何,遇到哪些困难,又是通过什么方式解决的,工程能否如期完成,为了寻找这些问题的答案,记者远赴千里之外的内蒙古赤峰市敖汉旗(蒙古族聚居区,相当于汉族地区县)一探究竟。     

地方“钱袋子”重构方案

如果分税制改革能从体制根本上解决地方的财源危机,那么,构建科学合理的地方税主体税种,重构地方钱袋子,则是其中不可或缺的技术性解决方案。地方税主体税种,指的是某一个或几个长期稳定地在地方(主要指省以及以下各级政府)财政收入中占据较大份额,构成地方税收入的主体。     

构建全国性市场体系的承诺

SEC(美国证券交易委员会)正在考虑关于市场架构的问题,我很高兴能够在这里与大家分享自己对这些重要问题的看法.如往常一样,我的发言仅仅代表个人观点,并不必然反映SEC或我的其他同事的意见.     

Shareholder wealth effects and bid negotiation in freeze-out deals: Are minority shareholders left out in the cold?

This paper examines the shareholder wealth effects of bids by controlling shareholders seeking to acquire the remaining minority equity stake in a firm, deals commonly referred to as minority freeze-outs. Minority claimants in freeze-out offers receive an allocation of deal surplus at the bid announcement that exceeds their pro rata claim on the firm. An analysis of bid outcomes and renegotiation indicates that minority claimants and their agents exercise significant bargaining power during freeze-out proposals. Overall, our results suggest that legal standards and economic incentives are sufficient to deter self-dealing by controllers during freeze-out bids.     

建立全面风险管理体系的对策与建议

为满足自身生存与发展的需要和适应加入WTO后金融监管要求,我国商业银行必须加快构筑全面风险管理体系。模式与战略风险管理组织体系是建立在商业银行法人治理结构和业务管理模式基础上的,不同商业银行的风险管理组织设置、职责划分等不尽相同,但其总体设计有相似之处。国际主流商业银行的风险管理组织体系的主要特征是:保障风险管理的独立性;建立全面垂直的风险管理体系;每项业务都要经过风险经理和业务经理共同审查的平行作业;实施矩阵式风险报告线路等。     

Building bridges: Institutional perspectives on interdisciplinarity

There have been a number of contributions to this journal (Futures) that discuss interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity (see our reference list), several of which refer to the institutional character of academic disciplines. The exact nature of this institutional character, however, is generally not discussed in great detail. Our contribution draws on W. Richard Scott's synthetic reconstruction of the many approaches to institutional analysis, aiming to elucidate what an institutional perspective on interdisciplinarity would entail.Without knowledge from several academic disciplines, important problems in contemporary society cannot be solved. Consequently, the quest for interdisciplinary is gaining support among many scientists and funding agencies. In this article, we argue that even if we can understand the ambitions of interdisciplinarity, we also need to be aware of the barriers involved. Interdisciplinary approaches to framing and solving problems will almost inevitably stumble into barriers that are of a structural, cultural and a cognitive nature and problems related to disciplines as social institutions. The question to be discussed is if and how these barriers can be overcome. We claim that it is the structural barriers that are the easiest ones to address, whereas the cultural barriers are more difficult to overcome because they require more than a regulatory fix.     

会计学科实验教学体系构建研究

实践性教学是目前各学科十分重视的一个教学环节,而实验教学又是实践教学的一个重要内容.也是会计学科教育教学研究中讨论的热点问题之一.本文以现存会计实验教学体系为研究对象,并以其几年来的教学实践为案例,对其结果进行分析研究,对现存的会计实验体系进行再设计,目的是为了促进会计实验教学的改进和发展,也为其他文科类专业或兄弟院校提供可借鉴的经验.     

Building resilience

Failure is a familiar trauma in life, but its effects on people differ widely. Some reel, recover, and move on with their lives; others get bogged down by anxiety, depression, and fear of the future. Seligman, who is known as the father of positive psychology, has spent three decades researching failure, helplessness, and optimism. He created a program at the University of Pennsylvania to help young adults and children overcome anxiety and depression, and has worked with colleagues from around the world to develop a program for teaching resilience. That program is being tested by the U.S. Army, an organization of 1.1 million people where trauma is more common and more severe than in any corporate setting. Nevertheless, businesspeo-ple can draw lessons from resilience training, particularly in times of failure and stagnation. The program is called Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, and it has three components: the Global Assessment Tool, a test for psychological fitness (administered to more than 900,000 soldiers to date); self-improvement courses following the test; and "master resilience training" (MRT) for drill sergeants. MRT focuses on enhancing mental toughness, highlighting and honing strengths, and fostering strong relationships-core competencies for any successful manager.