The Conversation: Black Death and the coronavirus

"Institutional Cross-ownership and Corporate Strategy: The Case of Mergers and Acquisitions" by Professor Chris Brooks, Dr Yeqin Zeng, and PhD Zhong Chen has been awarded Best Corporate Finance Paper at the 2016 Southern Finance Association annual conference. About the paper: The paper provides new evidence on the important role of institutional investors in affecting corporate strategy. We study institutional investors who hold stocks of both acquirers and targets before the announcements of mergers and acquisitions (M&As). The existence of these institutional cross-owners not only increases the probability of two firms merging, but also affects the outcomes of M&As. Institutional cross-ownership reduces target firm prices, lowers completion probabilities of deals with negative acquirer announcement returns, and increases the use of stock payment in M&A transactions. Furthermore, deals with high institutional cross-ownership have lower transaction costs and disclose more transparent financial statement information.

The World of Work Conference returns this year with the theme of work reimagined. ICMA Centre alumni, students and staff will be holding a session on The Future of Money: how digital is changing the way we pay. Join us on 12th September 2019 and hear insights from a range of speakers about preparing for the future world of work.

A team of academics from Henley Business School, including Dr Miriam Marra, Lecturer in Finance have undertaken a research project on the economic benefit of the Dubai Metro.