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a b s t r a c tWe examine how political connections impact the process of going public. Specifically, we test how political connections impact the pricing of the newly offered shares, the magnitude of underpricing, and the fixed cost of going public. Based on the experience of the newly public firms from Chinese security markets and using multiple measures of political connections, we find robust evidence that the issuing firms with political connections reap significant preferential benefits in the process of going public. To be specific, we find that firms -irrespective of their ownership status -with greater political connections have relatively higher offering price, lower underpricing, and lower fixed costs during the going-public process.Published by Elsevier Ltd.

In contrast to the previously documented cross-border discount, we find that there is positive cross-border effect for US acquirers during late 1990s and early 2000s. This is especially particular the case for those that acquire/merge with targets from segmented financial markets where acquirers experience significantly higher positive abnormal returns than those that acquire targets from integrated financial markets. Furthermore, firms acquiring segmented-market targets are also characterized by significantly higher post-merger operating performance improvement. The results indicate that the observed positive cross-border effect is mainly due to the increase in the number of transactions involving targets from segmented markets, in which the average firm experience significant financial constraints. We contend that value is created by a combination of firms with different financial market integration status, in which funds are provided to high cost firms. The finding that the value creation is even higher within the group of acquirers with a lower cost of capital provides additional support for our conjecture.

This paper examines the impact of ownership structure and other relevant factors on the variability of bank performance in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. It highlights a sector of the MENA economy rarely investigated in such details in the past despite its tremendous importance for future growth and stability in the region. Among its results, the paper found majority foreign-owned private banks, especially MENA foreign-owned banks, performed significantly better than other types of banks. It also found stock or publicly traded banks, as well as the extent of overall foreign bank presence in a respective banking industry, to be associated with relatively better performance.

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