NEWSLETTER of July 11, 2025

The following content has been added at finexpert:

KPMG
GLOBAL FAMILY BUSINESS REPORT 2025
Growth matters for any business – it is essential for building prosperity and sustainability. However, for family businesses, how you grow matters beyond sales and bottom-line profit. Success is multi-faceted involving not just financial performance, but social responsibility and environmental impact underpinned by the legacy and identify of the family, its purpose and values. Our latest research report prepared in collaboration with STEP Project Global Consortium and KPMG Private Enterprise using data collected from 2,683 businesses from over 80 countries provides a deeper understanding of the core drivers of family business growth – effective governance and leadership, a focus on sustainability across generations and the capacity for strategic investment to enhance performance. >more

J.P. Morgan
EUROPE GUIDE TO THE MARKETS Q3 2025
The volatility from the first half of the year is likely to persist, while the markets continue to play an important role in steering the US administration towards sensible and consensual policies. Markets will also be guided by incoming data and how the US and global economies deal with uncertainty and new cost pressures. >more

I-Advise
STUDIE ZUR UNTERNEHMENSBEWERTUNG BEI GESELLSCHAFTSRECHTLICHEN BEWERTUNGSANLÄSSEN: JULI 2025
In the current I-ADVISE-study on valuation practice in the context of structural measures under the Stock Corporation Act, one focus is on the use of the stock market price instead of the capitalised earnings value to estimate the company value, due to the latest Federal Court of Justice rulings. Correspondingly, not only the valuations in 2024 but also the settlement cases with a cut-off date in the first half of 2025 have been analysed. In none of these cases was the settlement payment made on the basis of the market price without determining the capitalised earnings value. Even if the stock market price was lower than the capitalised earnings value, the settlement payment was made at the capitalised earnings value because the stock market price was not considered sufficiently reliable. >more

Q1’25 VENTURE PULSE REPORT EUROPE
KPMG - VC investment in Europe remained flat in Q1 2025, holding at $18 billion, the same as in Q4 2024. However, deal volume declined significantly, with 1,883 deals recorded — down from 2,314 the previous quarter. Despite the overall plateau in funding value, the number of megadeals increased, signaling a shift towards larger, later-stage investments. Q1 2025 saw five deals exceeding $500 million, up from three in Q4 2024. On a country level, the UK led European investment activity with $5.5 billion raised, followed by Germany at $2.2 billion and France at $1.7 billion. >more

HOW DOES REMOVING THE TAX BENEFITS OF DEBT AFFECT FIRMS? EVIDENCE FROM THE 2017 US TAX REFORM
Ali Sanati, and Mehdi Beyhaghi
2025
Despite extensive efforts, the impact of the tax benefits of debt on firm decisions is an open question. The 2017 US tax reform offers a unique opportunity to estimate these effects by limiting the tax advantages of debt for most firms, except for small businesses with average sales below $25 million. Using a regression discontinuity design around this threshold, we find that corporate debt decreases by $0.36 for every one-dollar reduction in the present value of tax benefits, while equity financing does not increase sufficiently to offset the reduction. Treated firms also reduce investments, consistent with increased external financing costs. These effects are similar across public and private companies. Although the reform disproportionately impacts small firms, the findings suggest that the results are informative for larger companies as well. Overall, we document a first-order role for tax incentives that affect the cost of capital in shaping corporate policies. >more

DIVERSIFICATION DRIVEN DEMAND FOR LARGE STOCK
Huaizhi Chen
2025
I show that as a portfolio’s value concentration increases, actively managed portfolios predictably trim large positions, maintaining a level of practical diversification. This rebalancing channel is concentrated at thresholds implied by regulatory guidelines and by a fund’s own risk management histories. Since larger stocks are typically held widely and in large weights, they experience a coordinated contrarian trading demand that originates from this form of risk management. Diversification driven demand captures a novel return-reversal pattern in the large stock portfolios. Compensating this source of demand accentuates momentum returns during the modern sample period (1990 to 2022). >more