Researchers to investigate footballers’ heights in debate over goal sizes

"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 Bubonic Plague hit Europe in the 1340’s causing a third to a half of the population to die! This article talks of repercussions of the plague for those who survived including PTSD to say the least. Featuring Mark Bailey, Adrian Bell and Eleanor Russell.

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.