NEWSLETTER of October 16, 2020

The following content has been added at finexpert:

Allen & Overy
FINTECH M&A: THE FUTURE OF DEALMAKING POST COVID-19
For investors in the fintech market, the contrast could not have been more stark. In the first quarter of 2020, financial institutions, financial sponsors and mature fintech companies generated a series of increasingly high-value deals. As we enter the final quarter of 2020, the picture has changed. As the Covid-19 pandemic took hold across the world, fintech transactions went into rapid decline, mirroring the pattern of steeply falling deal activity across almost all sectors and regions. >more

CMS
WHO DARES WINS: EUROPEAN M&A OUTLOOK 2020
Mergermarket is pleased to present Who dares wins: European M&A Outlook 2020, published in association with CMS. This report provides invaluable insights into the M&A landscape in Europe in 2020, and the opportunities and challenges facing dealmakers. Amongst others, it shows that M&A appetite weakens. 74% of respondents say the pandemic has caused their dealmaking appetite to lessen. 65% of respondents are not considering M&A, against 45% in last year’s survey. >more

Bain & Company
IS YOUR PORTFOLIO COMPANY’S VALUE CREATION PLAN STILL ON TRACK?
As the Covid-19 pandemic drags on, private equity firms face critical decision points for every company in their portfolios. Much remains uncertain in the current environment, but fund managers can count on one thing—the value creation plans they had in place in January are now suspect if not completely irrelevant. Faced with multiple levels of both short- and long-term change and disruption, firms need to ask themselves whether the assumptions that originally underpinned their value creation plans still hold true. >more

J.P. Morgan
GUIDE TO THE MARKETS: EUROPE Q4 2020
Updated each quarter, the Guide to the Markets illustrates a comprehensive array of market and economic trends and statistics for Europe. This includes information about equities, fixed income and other asset classes as well as macroeconomic analyses. >more

INSTITUTIONAL INVESTORS AND CORPORATE GOVERNANCE
Amil Dasgupta, Vyacheslav Fos, and Zacharias Sautner
2020
We provide a comprehensive overview of the role of institutional investors in corporate governance with three main components. First, we provide a detailed characterization of key aspects of the legal and regulatory setting within which institutional investors govern portfolio firms. Second, we establish new stylized facts documenting the evolution and importance of institutional ownership. Third, we synthesize the evolving “response” of the recent theoretical and empirical academic literature in finance to the emergence of institutional investors in corporate governance. We highlight how the defining aspect of institutional investors – the fact that they are financial intermediaries – differentiates them in their governance role from standard principal block-holders. Further, not all institutional investors are identical, and we pay close attention to heterogeneity amongst institutional investors as block-holders. >more

BAN, BOOM, AND ECHO! ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND INITIAL COIN OFFERINGS
Cristiano Bellavitis, Douglas J. Cumming, and Tom R. Vanacker
2020
Regulatory spillovers occur when regulation in one country affects either the expected regulatory approach and/or entrepreneurial finance markets in other countries. Drawing on institutional theory, we investigate the global implications of a regulatory spillover on entrepreneurship. We argue that regulatory spillovers have both short- and long-term effects on the number and quality of entrepreneurial finance initiatives such as Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). Based on a sample of 3,838 ICOs in 108 countries, we find that a regulatory ban of ICOs in one country causes a short-term increase in the number of low-quality ICOs in other countries and a long-term drop in the number of ICOs albeit with a higher average quality. Overall, a restrictive regulation triggered a process of increased market selection. >more