Annual Members Meeting 2015
- 07 - 08 May 2015
- •
- Olso, Norway
Thanks to the generosity of Professor Øyvind Bøhren, Professor of Financial Economics at the Norwegian Business School, the General Assembly took place at the BI on Friday morning, followed by the 2015 ECGI Annual Lecture and the announcement of the winners of the 2015 Working Paper prizes. Professor Julian Franks, Professor of Finance at the London Business School and an ECGI Fellow, gave the lecture on the topic The Privatization of Bankruptcy: Evidence from the Shipping Industry.
2015 Working Paper Prize-giving:
The Standard Life Investments Finance Prize was won by Alexander Borisov (University of Cincinnati), Eitan Goldman (Indiana University and ECGI), and Nandini Gupta (Indiana University) for:
The Corporate Value of (Corrupt) Lobbying (ECGI Finance Working Paper No. 423/2014)
The Allen & Overy Law Prize was won by Mark Roe (Harvard University and ECGI) for:
Information
7 May - Day 1
ECGI Annual Dinner
8 May - Day 2
Annual General Meeting - Norwegian Business School (BI)
Annual Lecture 2015: “The Privatization of Bankruptcy: Evidence from the Shipping Industry” - Professor Julian Franks
Speakers:
Discussant:
Annual Lecture 2015: “The Privatization of Bankruptcy: Evidence from the Shipping Industry” - Professor Julian Franks
“There is only one law in shipping: there is no law in shipping” Sami Ofer (shipping magnate)
Most countries limit freedom of contracting in bankruptcy through mandatory procedures. These state-mandated procedures are justified on the grounds of costly co-ordination failures between creditors. While co-ordination failures are costly, so are limits placed on the freedom to contract. Unfortunately, we have little evidence of how a freedom-of-contracting approach in distress and bankruptcy would work and its comparative efficiency. Professor Franks' lecture will be based on his study co-authored by Oren Sussman of the Said Business School and Vikrant Vig of the London Business School which attempts to fill this gap by examining the shipping industry. Because of the ex-territorial nature of its assets, the resolution of financial distress is largely resolved without resort to national bankruptcy codes. The unregulated nature of the industry makes shipping a unique natural experiment with spontaneous order that evolves from a decentralised development of market-based institutions.
Speakers
Discussants
Institutional Ownership and Governance
This paper describes different forms of ownership across countries and how these forms influence the way companies are governed. In most stock markets...
Read more
Reciprocity in Takeovers
The European Commission has proposed a Takeover Directive that aims to make the control of European corporations more contestable. The European...
Read more
Returns to Hedge Fund Activism: An International Study
This paper provides evidence on the incidence, characteristics, and performance of activist engagements across countries. We find that the incidence...
Read more
Should Shareholders Have a Say on Acquisitions?
Shareholders of U.S. corporations have lost billions of dollars in acquisitions they never approved. In the United Kingdom the listing...
Read more
Does Mandatory Shareholder Voting Prevent Bad Acquisitions?
Shareholder voting on corporate acquisitions is controversial. In most countries acquisition decisions are delegated to boards and shareholder...
Read more
Corporate Governance Through Voice and Exit
How do active managers engage with portfolio firms? And, what role does monitoring and engagement play in their trading decisions? We use proprietary...
Read more
Returns to Shareholder Activism: Evidence from a Clinical Study of the Hermes U.K. Focus Fund
This article reports a unique analysis of private engagements by an activist fund. It is based on data made available to us by Hermes, the fund manager...
Read moreECGI 2015 Working Paper Prizes (Law & Finance)
Following the lecture, ECGI awarded two research prizes for the best papers in the Finance and Law Working Paper Series’ from the previous year.
The Finance Series prize of €5,000 is sponsored by Standard Life Investments, the global asset manager, was awarded to Alexander Borisov (University of Cincinnati), Eitan Goldman (Indiana University and ECGI), and Nandini Gupta (Indiana University) for their paper on "The Corporate Value of (Corrupt) Lobbying" (ECGI Finance Working Paper No. 423/2014).
The Law Series prize of €5,000 is sponsored by Allen & Overy, the international law firm, was awarded to Mark Roe (Harvard University and ECGI) for his paper on Structural Corporate Degradation Due to Too-Big-to-Fail Finance (ECGI Law Working Paper No. 253/2014).
See Harvard announcement.
Speakers
Presentations
Annual Lecture 2015: “The Privatization of Bankruptcy: Evidence from the Shipping Industry” - Professor Julian Franks
Annual Lecture 2015: “The Privatization of Bankruptcy: Evidence from the Shipping Industry” - Professor Julian Franks
“There is only one law in shipping: there is no law in shipping” Sami Ofer (shipping magnate)
Most countries limit freedom of contracting in bankruptcy through mandatory procedures. These state-mandated procedures are justified on the grounds of costly co-ordination failures between creditors. While co-ordination failures are costly, so are limits placed on the freedom to contract. Unfortunately, we have little evidence of how a freedom-of-contracting approach in distress and bankruptcy would work and its comparative efficiency. Professor Franks' lecture will be based on his study co-authored by Oren Sussman of the Said Business School and Vikrant Vig of the London Business School which attempts to fill this gap by examining the shipping industry. Because of the ex-territorial nature of its assets, the resolution of financial distress is largely resolved without resort to national bankruptcy codes. The unregulated nature of the industry makes shipping a unique natural experiment with spontaneous order that evolves from a decentralised development of market-based institutions.
Speakers
Discussants
Reciprocity in Takeovers
The European Commission has proposed a Takeover Directive that aims to make the control of European corporations more contestable. The European...
Read more
A common argument against divestment is that it jettisons voting power and that it has a small effect on stock prices. We argue that divestment is a form of...
Read more
Returns to Shareholder Activism: Evidence from a Clinical Study of the Hermes U.K. Focus Fund
This article reports a unique analysis of private engagements by an activist fund. It is based on data made available to us by Hermes, the fund manager...
Read more
Returns to Hedge Fund Activism: An International Study
This paper provides evidence on the incidence, characteristics, and performance of activist engagements across countries. We find that the incidence...
Read more
Where Do Firms Incorporate? Deregulation and the Cost of Entry
We study how deregulation of corporate law affects the decision of entrepreneurs of where to incorporate. Recent rulings by the European Court of...
Read more
Hedge Fund Activism in Europe
The paper analyzes 362 European activist interventions by hedge funds, focus funds and other activist investors from 2000 to 2008. The sample includes...
Read more
Ownership: Evolution and Regulation
This paper is the first study of long-run evolution of investor protection and corporate ownership in the U.K. over the 20th century. Formal investor...
Read moreECGI 2015 Working Paper Prizes (Law & Finance)
Following the lecture, ECGI awarded two research prizes for the best papers in the Finance and Law Working Paper Series’ from the previous year.
The Finance Series prize of €5,000 is sponsored by Standard Life Investments, the global asset manager, was awarded to Alexander Borisov (University of Cincinnati), Eitan Goldman (Indiana University and ECGI), and Nandini Gupta (Indiana University) for their paper on "The Corporate Value of (Corrupt) Lobbying" (ECGI Finance Working Paper No. 423/2014).
The Law Series prize of €5,000 is sponsored by Allen & Overy, the international law firm, was awarded to Mark Roe (Harvard University and ECGI) for his paper on Structural Corporate Degradation Due to Too-Big-to-Fail Finance (ECGI Law Working Paper No. 253/2014).
See Harvard announcement.