We offer the first empirical analysis connecting the timing of general partner (GP) compensation to private equity fund performance. Using detailed information on limited partnership agreements between private equity limited and general partners, we find that “GP-friendly” contracts—agreements that pay general partners on a deal-by-deal basis instead of withholding carried interest until a benchmark return has been earned—are associated with higher returns, both gross and net of fees. This is robust to measures of performance persistence, time period effects, and other contract terms and is related to exit-timing incentives. Timing practices balance GP incentives against limited partner downside protection.

Restrukturierungen werden sowohl durch die Digitalisierung, aber auch durch klassische Themen – beispielsweise die Notwendigkeit von Umsatz- und Kostensynergien in kompetitiven Märkten – verstärkt vorangetrieben. Dieser Beitrag beleuchtet vor allem die Motive und Folgen aus wissenschaftlicher Perspektive, indem großzahlige empirische Befunde zu den Themen Beschäftigung, Finanzkennzahlen und Kapitalerhöhungen sowie steuerliche Motive prägnant zusammengefasst und im Kontext des geplanten Joint Ventures von thyssenkrupp und Tata Steel diskutiert werden.

This study examines the loan-pricing behavior of German banks for a large variety of retail and corporate loan products. We find that a bank’s operational efficiency is priced in bank loan rates and alters interest-setting behavior. Specifically, we establish that a higher degree of operational efficiency leads to lower loan markups, which makes prices more competitive and smoothes the setting of interest rates. By employing state-of-the-art stochastic frontier efficiency measures to capture a bank’s operational efficiency, we take a look at the bank customers’ perspective and demonstrate the extent to which borrowers benefit from cost-efficient banking.

Unternehmen, die regelmäßig ihr Geschäftsfeldportfolio durch aktives M&A-Geschäft in Form von Verkäufen und Käufen steuern, erzielen deutlich bessere Ein- und Zweijahresrenditen für Aktionäre als alternative M&A-Strategien. Ursächlich hierfür ist u.a., dass die bekannten Effekte in Form von Abschlägen für z.B. diversifizierende Transaktionen oder Stock-Deals deutlich geringer ausfallen als bei Vergleichsgruppen wie z.B. One-Time-Deal Unternehmen. Dieser Beitrag analysiert die Gründe für den Erfolg von Portfoliomastern, Unternehmen die mehr als vier Deals in fünf Jahren durchführen. Durch ein professionalisiertes M&A-Management grenzen sie sich positiv in ihrer mittel- und langfristigen Renditeentwicklung gegenüber Strategic-Shiftern (zwei bis vier Deals) und One-Timern ab. Ihr Erfolg beruht darauf sowohl bei diversifizierenden als auch Stock-Deals bekannte übliche Performanceabschläge zu vermeiden und auch in volatilen Markphasen wertschaffende Deals umzusetzen.

Banks face a 'behavioralization' of their balance sheets since deposit funding increasingly consists of non-maturing deposits with uncertain cash flows exposing banks to asset liability (ALM) risk. Thus, this study examines the behavior of banks’ retail customers regarding non-maturing deposits. Our unique sample comprises the contract and cash flow data for 2.2 million individual contracts from 1991 to 2010. We find that contractual rewards, i.e., qualified interest payments, and government subsidies, effectively stabilize saving behavior and thus bank funding. The probability of an early deposit withdrawal decreases by approximately 40%, and cash flow volatility drops by about 25%. Our findings provide important insights for banks using pricing incentives to steer desired saving patterns for their non-maturing deposit portfolios. Finally, these results are informative regarding the bank liquidity regulations (Basel III) concerning the stability of deposits and the minimum requirements for risk management (European Commission DIRECTIVE 2006/48/EC).

Standard equity valuation approaches (i.e., DDM, RIM, and DCF model) are derived under the assumption of ideal conditions, such as infinite payoffs and clean surplus accounting. Because these conditions are hardly ever met, we extend the standard approaches, based on the fundamental principle of financial statement articulation. The extended models are then tested empirically by employing two sets of forecasts: (1) analyst forecasts provided by Value Line and (2) forecasts generated by cross-sectional regression models. The main result is that our extended models yield considerably smaller valuation errors. Moreover, by construction, identical value estimates are obtained across the extended models. By reestablishing empirical equivalence under non-ideal conditions, our approach provides a benchmark that enables us to quantify the errors resulting from individual deviations from ideal conditions, and thus, to analyze the robustness of the standard approaches. Finally, by providing a level playing field for the different valuation approaches, our findings have implications for other empirical settings, for example, estimating the implied cost of capital.

This study examines the relevance of financial and non-financial information for the valuation of venture capital (VC) investments. Based on a hand-collected data set on venture-backed start-ups in Germany, we investigate the internal due diligence documents of over 200 investment rounds. We document that balance sheet and income statement items capture as much economic content as verifiable non-financial information (e.g. team experience or the number of patents) while controlling for several deal characteristics (e.g. industry, investment round, or yearly VC fund inflows). In addition, we show that valuations based on accounting and non-accounting information yield a level of valuation accuracy that is comparable to that of publicly traded firms. Further analyses show that the industry-specific total asset multiples outperform the popular revenue multiples but lead to significantly less accurate results than those obtained from the more comprehensive valuation models. Overall, our findings might inform researchers and standard-setters of the usefulness of accounting information for investment companies and provide additional evidence to gauge the overall valuation accuracy in VC settings.

This study integrates the government in the context of company valuation. Our framework allows to analyze and to quantify the risk-sharing effects and conflicts of interest between the government and the shareholders when firms follow different financial policies. We provide novel evidence that firms with fixed future levels of debt might invest more than socially desirable. Economically, this happens if the gain in tax-shields is big enough to outweigh the loss in the unlevered firm value. Our findings have implications for the practice of investment subsidy programs provided by the government to avoid fostering investments beyond the socially optimal level.

This article examines and extends research on the relation between the capital asset pricing model market beta, accounting risk measures and macroeconomic risk factors. We employ a beta decomposition approach that nests competing models with different business risk proxies and allows to frame cross-model comparison. Because model tests require estimated independent variables resulting in measurement error, we empirically estimate three comparable model specifications with instrumental variable estimators and for the first time provide thorough instrument diagnostics in this setting. Correcting for the heretofore neglected weak instruments problem we find that growth risk (i.e., the risk of firm sales variations that are inconsistent with the market wide trends), is the business risk that explains cross-sectional variations in market beta best.

For the valuation of fast growing innovative firms Schwartz and Moon (Financ Anal J 56:62–75, 2000), (Financ Rev 36:7–26, 2001) develop a fundamental valuation model where key parameters follow stochastic processes. While prior research shows promising potential for this model, it has never been tested on a large scale dataset. Thus, guided by economic theory, this paper is the first to design a large-scale applicable implementation on around 30,000 technology firm quarter observations from 1992 to 2009 for the US to assess this model. Evaluating the feasibility and performance of the Schwartz-Moon model reveals that it is comparably accurate to the traditional sales multiple with key advantages in valuing small and non-listed firms. Most importantly, however, the model is able to indicate severe market over- or undervaluation from a fundamental perspective. We demonstrate that a trading strategy based on our implementation has significant investment value. Consequently, the model seems suitable for detecting misvaluations as the dot-com bubble.

We study the predictive ability of individual analyst target price changes for post-event abnormal stock returns within each recommendation category. Although prior studies generally demonstrate the investment value of target prices, we find that target price changes do not cause abnormal returns within each recommendation level. Instead, contradictory analyst signals (e.g., strong buy reiterations with large target price decreases) neutralize each other, whereas confirmatory signals reinforce each other. Further, our analysis reveals that large target price downgrades can be explained by preceding stock price decreases. However, upgrades are not preceded by stock price increases, thereby demonstrating asymmetric analyst behavior when adjusting target prices to stock prices. Our results suggest that investors should treat recommendations with caution when they are issued with large contradictory target price changes. Thus, instead of blindly following a recommendation, investors might put more weight on the change in the corresponding target price and consider transaction costs.

This article analyses 336 German venture capital transactions from 1990 to 2005 and seeks to determine why selected financial securities differ across deals. We find that a broad array of financial instruments is used, covering straight equity, mezzanine and debt‐like securities. Based on the chosen financial securities’ upside potential and downside protection characteristics, we provide an explanation for the differing use of these securities. Our results show that investors’ deal experience, adverse selection risks and economic prospects in the public equity market influence the selection of financial securities.