NEWSLETTER of August 30, 2019

The following content has been added at finexpert:

Accenture

THE (R)EVOLUTION OF MONEY: BLOCKCHAIN EMPOWERED CRYPTOCURRENCIES

The rapid price movements of Bitcoin, Ether and Ripple have fueled headlines across the globe recently. With this price volatility, it’s fair to say that blockchain powered digital currencies may not be ready for prime time. But their disruption of the current financial system is inevitable. Cryptocurrencies are creating a money revolution. The Accenture report “The (R)Evolution of Money: Blockchain Empowered Cryptocurrencies” takes an in-depth look at how cryptocurrency will disrupt the market as we know it and provides a road map for central banks and leading financial institutions to help lead this money revolution. >more

Mergermarket

DEAL DRIVERS EMEA: 2019 HALF-YEAR EDITION

This report provides an in-depth review of M&A activity in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa for the first half of 2019, offering insights into how announced deals will impact M&A for the year ahead. Against a backdrop of slowing economic growth globally and geopolitical tensions such as Brexit, the EMEA region saw 3,345 M&A deals valued at €354.3bn in H1 2019. While this represents a drop-off in activity compared to the same period last year (down 17% in volume and 33% in value), appetite for M&A remains in certain areas. >more

Invest Europe

CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE STATISTICS 2018

An Invest Europe's Special Paper on private equity activity in Central and Eastern Europe. This report provides annual activity statistics for the private equity markets of Central and Eastern Europe in 2018. >more

Alvarez & Marsal / Financier Worldwide

MANAGING TRANSACTIONAL RISK

The fast pace of a transaction process means that acquirers need to be committed to identifying and assessing risks - both known and unknown - as early and fully as possible. This article gives a summary of a Financier Worldwide roundtable panel discussion on the evolution of risk management as a result of poor transaction execution, particularly in large, transformational deals. >more

Deutsche Bank Research

NEGATIVE INTEREST RATES AND THEIR EFFECT ON HUMANS

What should an honest and law-abiding German citizen think when their finance minister, a high-ranking representative of the state, is investigating whether he can protect them from the actions of another state body, the central bank? This is exactly what the Bavarian Prime Minister Söder is calling for: a ban on negative interest on bank deposits (up to a certain level), whose chances of realisation are now being examined by the Federal Ministry of Finance. >more

HOW MUCH DO DIRECTORS INFLUENCE FIRM VALUE?

Aaron Burt, Christopher M. Hrdlicka, and Jarrad Harford
2018
The value a director provides to a firm is empirically hard to establish. We estimate that value by exploiting the commonality in idiosyncratic returns of firms linked by a director and show that, on average, a single director's influence causes variation in firm value of almost 1% per year. The return commonality is not due to industry or other observable economic links. Variation in the availability of information on shared directors and a placebo test exploiting the timing of shared directors provide further identification. The results also imply that the directorial labor market does not fully assess directors in real time. >more

WHY DOES AN IPO IMPACT RIVAL FIRMS?

Matthew I. Spiegel, and Heather Tookes
2018
IPO firms’ rivals tend to experience performance declines following an IPO in the industry. Why? We estimate a dynamic structural oligopoly model to distinguish among alternative theories that can explain an industry’s evolution post-IPO. We find that most changes in rivals’ performance are due to industry trends that also drive IPOs. However, there are also some “competitive” IPOs where the IPO enhances the IPO firm’s performance, at the expense of competitors. These findings help reconcile prior evidence of average performance reductions of both IPO firms and their rivals with well-known cases in which firms have benefited from going public. >more