We analyze a uniquely constructed data set of open market share repurchases across a sample of European firms. We find that the announcement date market reaction is lower than that in the US, mainly because of (i) the relatively large number of recurring announcements which generate significantly lower returns than the initial announcements of intention to repurchase shares; (ii) the rather low market reaction in France, due probably to specific governance and corporate cultural issues; and (iii) the regulatory reform that allowed UK firms to keep the repurchased shares as treasury stock, which decreased their market impact. Across our countries, taxation, shareholder protection, and the European Union's Market Abuse Directive do not affect significantly the market valuation of repurchases. Ultimately, domestic institutional specificities and reforms play significant roles in the market valuation and popularity of share repurchases

In this paper, we analyze whether regulation reduced risk during the credit crisis and the sovereign debt crisis for a cross section of global banks. In this regard, we examine distance to default (Laeven and Levine, 2008), systemic risk (Acharya et al., 2010), idiosyncratic risk, and systematic risk. We employ World Bank survey data on regulations to test our conjectures. We find that regulatory restrictions, official supervisory power, capital stringency, along with private monitoring can explain bank risk in both crises. Additionally, we find that deposit insurance schemes enhance moral hazard, as this encouraged banks to take on more risk and perform poorly during the sovereign debt crisis. Finally, official supervision and private monitoring explains the returns during both crisis periods.

In this paper we investigate the impact of institutional ownership on UK mergers and acquisitions. We employ a comprehensive sample of M&As conducted by UK acquirers from 2000 to 2010, thus including a full cycle of peak and trough in M&A waves. We find that institutional investors increase the likelihood of an M&A to be a large, cross-border deal, opting for full control. Moreover, institutional ownership concentration and foreign institutional ownership increase the likelihood of cross-border M&As. In addition, we assess the influence of institutional shareholders’ investment horizon and find that while investment horizon have a negative influence in encouraging cross-border M&As, the presence of long-term investors encourages larger M&As. Finally, even after controlling for the 2007-08 financial crisis the market reacts negatively to the announcement of cross-border M&As

The level of modeling sophistication in financial services has increased considerably over the years. Nowadays, the complexity of financial problems and the vast amount of data require an engineering approach based on analytical modeling tools for planning, decision making, reporting, and supervisory control. This article provides an overview of the main financial applications of computational and data analytics approaches, focusing on the coverage of the recent developments and trends. The overview covers different methodological tools and their uses in areas, such as portfolio management, credit analysis, banking, and insurance.

In this paper, we assess which firm-characteristics are associated with a firm's decision to announce a share repurchase programme in a cross-country framework. In the models, we incorporate firm-specific financial characteristics and measures of share price performance. We find that size, cash dividends, and ownership concentration consistently have a significant impact on share repurchase announcements in all three countries under study. However, the share price performance does not explain the decision to announce a share repurchase. The robustness of the proposed models is investigated across different dimensions of sample-matching methods and with a boot-strap technique. Finally, we construct a number of models with a robust predictive ability of a firm's likelihood to announce a share repurchas