Martin Holmen

Minority Shareholder Protections and the Private Benefits of Control for Swedish Mergers

Sweden has a high degree of separation of ownership from control through pyramids, dual-class shares, and cross-holdings. This increases the potential for private benefits of control. However, Swedens extralegal institutions—tax compliance and newspaper circulation—are consistent with greater shareholder protection. Using data on Swedish mergers we find limited evidence of shareholder expropriation. Apparently, Swedens extralegal institutions offset the drawback of weak corporate governance.

Family ownership, dual-class shares, and risk management

We investigate whether the use of dual-class shares affects the financial policy of Swedish public corporations. Specifically, we distinguish between firms that are controlled by owners with poor portfolio diversification (families) and those controlled by owners with diversified portfolios (institutions). We find that, on average, family-controlled firms do not rely on less debt, more corporate diversification, or more financial hedging than non-family firms do. For family-controlled firms, however, we find that controlling owners with higher vote-to-capital ratios are associated with firms with less debt and lower probabilities of hedging. This evidence is consistent with the perception that family-controlled firms use shares with different voting rights so as simultaneously to maintain control and reduce the familys portfolio risk.

Do Option-like Incentives Induce Overvaluation? Evidence from Experimental Asset Markets

One potential reason for bubbles evolving prior to the financial crisis was excessive risk taking stemming from option-like incentive schemes in financial institutions. By running laboratory asset markets, we investigate the impact of option-like incentives on price formation and trading behavior. We observe (i) that option-like incentives induce significantly higher market prices than linear incentives. We further find that (ii) option-like incentives provoke subjects to behave differently and to take more risk than subjects with linear incentives. We finally show that (iii) trading at inflated prices is rational for subjects with option-like incentives since it increases their expected payout.

Trading-Off Corporate Control and Personal Diversification Through Capital Structure and Merger Activity

In this study we use direct estimates of the portfolio diversification of the largest shareholder in a firm to study the impact of shareholder diversification on the firm. For firms where the controlling shareholder is an individual, our tests indicate that the owner-managers use debt, dual class shares and corporate control transactions (merger activity) to strategically trade off corporate control and the drawback of poor portfolio diversification. However, for firms where the controlling shareholder is an institution, our results indicate that control but not diversification is important.

Family ownership and the cost of under-diversification

We argue that the cost to a family of holding a large block of shares in a company, or under-diversifying, is reflected in the diversification benefits that the family forfeits. These costs can be substantial. For example, given a constant relative risk aversion parameter of 2, the median cost to our sample of families controlling large Swedish firms is 13% of the market value of firms shares. We find that this cost is reduced by pyramid structures but not by the use of dual class shares.

Charity, Incentives, and Performance

We propose that donating profits to charity may improve firm performance through reduced moral hazard and increased effort in incomplete contract environments. This proposition is tested and confirmed in an incomplete contract principal-agent laboratory experiment where principals’ profits are donated to charity. The results show that both principals and agents have higher earnings in treatments where principals are working on behalf of a charity. Only in the charity treatments do agents respond positively to the effort levels suggested by the principals, and do higher requested levels of effort result in higher principal earnings.

Storytelling as a means to increase consumers’ processing of financial information

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether a narrative compared to a traditional fact-related format of financial information elicits more involved processing of such information by consumers and therefore more informed choices of retirement savings. Design/methodology/approach – A total of 394 undergraduates were recruited to three experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2 participants presented with information about a mutual fund were randomly assigned to one of four conditions (narrative format vs fact-related format crossed with optimistic vs pessimistic financial forecast). In both experiments dependent variables were positive affect, emotive response and purchase intention, and in Experiment 2 also scepticism about the information. Involvement and financial knowledge were furthermore measured in Experiment 2. In Experiment 3 information was presented about a savings account. Participants were randomly assigned to either a condition with a narrative or a fact-related information format....

Do anti-takeover devices affect the takeover likelihood or the takeover premium?

In this paper, we use Heckman selection models to analyse the relation between the likelihood of the firm becoming a takeover target, the takeover premium, and the use of anti-takeover devices. Ordinary least squares regressions suggest that anti-takeover devices, especially dual class shares, are associated with a higher takeover premium. However, we also document that anti-takeover devices reduce the likelihood that the firm will be taken over. When we control for the fact that takeover targets are selected, we do not find a significant relation between the takeover premium and dual class shares. Hence, our results suggest that the takeover premium is indeed influenced by private information about the likelihood of takeover.

An Agent-Based Model to Study the Impact of Convex Incentives on Financial Markets

We investigate by means of agent-based simulations the influence of convex incentives, e.g. option-like compensation, on financial markets. We propose an agent based model already developed in Fabretti et al (2015), where the model was build with the aim of studying convex contract effect using the results of a laboratory experiment performed by Holmen et al. (2014) as benchmark. Here we replicate their results studying prices dynamics, volatility, volumes and risk preference effect. We show that convex incentives produces higher prices, lower liquidity and higher volatility when agents are risk averse, while, differently from Fabretti et al (2015), their effect is less evident if agents are risk lovers. This appears related to the fact that prices in the long run converge more likely to the equilibrium when agents are risk averse.

Pyramid IPOs on the Chinese Growth Enterprise Market

ABSTRACT In this article, we investigate initial public offerings (IPOs) of high-tech firms on the Chinese Growth Enterprise Market (GEM). Almost half of the GEM IPOs are set up in pyramid structures. The likelihood of a pyramid structure increases with the size of the IPO firm and state control. Our results do not suggest that pyramids are set up to overcome financial constraints. However, we document that pyramid IPOs are discounted before the IPO. The subscription price-to-book ratio is significantly lower for pyramid IPOs, and this translates into higher underpricing. We conclude that IPO investors demand a higher risk premium when investing in pyramid IPOs.