NEWSLETTER of February 14, 2020

The following content has been added at finexpert:

Deloitte

FINANCIAL MARKETS REGULATORY OUTLOOK 2020

The annual assessment by Deloitte's EMEA Centre for Regulatory Strategy examines trends and specific regulatory issues that will shape the financial services industry in 2020. The forecasts can help executives anticipate and manage the regulatory landscape in 2020. Deloitte has identified four medium-term trends, ten cross-industry topics of strategic importance, and a number of additional topics specific to each of the banking, capital markets, insurance and investment management sectors. >more

Mergermarket

M&A SPOTLIGHT: CEE - WOLF THEISS CORPORATE MONITOR FY 2019

Mergermarket is pleased to present the latest edition of Wolf Theiss Corporate Monitor’s M&A Spotlight on CEE/SEE. This report surveyed 150 senior-level executives regarding their dealmaking experience in the region and offers analysis of M&A activity in the region. Investors’ experience of M&A in CEE/SEE is overwhelmingly positive. 89% of survey respondents say that their past experience of investing in CEE/SEE has made them more likely to invest in the region again. >more

J.P. Morgan

2020 GLOBAL ALTERNATIVES OUTLOOK

J.P. Morgan Asset Management released its second annual Global Alternatives Outlook, providing a 12-18-month outlook across key alternative asset classes and highlighting the views of the CEOs, CIOs and strategists from the firm's 15 distinct alternatives investment engines. The report offers an assessment of opportunities in alternatives as investors look to construct resilient portfolios in an environment of high public equity valuations and lower fixed income yields. >more

PwC

DEUTSCHER STARTUP MONITOR: AUSKOPPLUNG FRANKFURT

Start-ups in the greater Frankfurt area have taken up the cause of growth - and are focusing on green, social issues. A good half of the founders from the Hessian metropolis (56 percent) describe growth as their most important task at the moment and thus prioritise the topic higher than sales and customer acquisition (51 percent), product development (42 percent) and capital procurement (40 percent). Nationwide, growth is only on the list as the top topic for a good third of the start-ups. >more

PwC

STAND DER IMPLEMENTIERUNG VON TAX COMPLIANCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMEN

Companies reduce liability and reputation risks by using internal control systems to fulfill their tax obligations - so-called Tax Compliance Management Systems (Tax CMS, TCMS). In practice, companies, consultants and auditors interpret the requirements in detail very differently. We therefore wanted to know how far German and globally operating individual companies and groups of companies are in implementing Tax CMS and whether standards for the implementation of certain Tax CMS requirements have meanwhile emerged. >more

DANCING WITH ACTIVISTS

Lucian A. Bebchuk, Alon Brav, Wei Jiang, and Thomas Keusch
2020
An important milestone often reached in the life of an activist engagement is entering into a “settlement” agreement between the activist and the target’s board. Using a comprehensive hand-collected data set, we analyze the drivers, nature, and consequences of such settlement agreements. Settlements are more likely when the activist has a credible threat to win board seats in a proxy fight and when incumbents’ reputation concerns are stronger. Consistent with incomplete contracting, face-saving benefits and private information considerations, settlements commonly do not contract directly on operational or leadership changes sought by the activist but rather on board composition changes. Settlements are accompanied by positive stock price reactions, and they are subsequently followed by changes of the type sought by activists, including CEO turnover, higher shareholder payouts, and improved operating performance. We find no evidence to support concerns that settlements enable activists to extract rents at the expense of other investors. >more

THE PERSISTENT EFFECT OF INITIAL SUCCESS: EVIDENCE FROM VENTURE CAPITAL

Ramana Nanda, Sampsa Samila, and Olav Sorenson
2019
We use investment-level data to study performance persistence in venture capital (VC). Consistent with prior studies, we find that each additional IPO among a VC firm's first ten investments predicts as much as an 8% higher IPO rate on its subsequent investments, though this effect erodes with time. In exploring its sources, we document several additional facts: successful outcomes stem in large part from investing in the right places at the right times; VC firms do not persist in their ability to choose the right places and times to invest; but early success does lead to investing in later rounds and in larger syndicates. This pattern of results seems most consistent with the idea that initial success improves access to deal flow. That preferential access raises the quality of subsequent investments, perpetuating performance differences in initial investments. >more