The Economic Impact of Forming a European Company

Abstract

Ever since 2004 companies located in Member States of the European Economic Area have been able to opt to incorporate in a supranational legal form, the Societas Europaea. We found that companies located in Member States where the Societas Europaea offers additional legal arbitrage opportunities benefit most. Moreover, our results show that the stock price reaction is positive when the decision to incorporate as an Societas Europaea involves moving the firm's registered office and that firms are moving to jurisdictions with significantly lower corporate tax rates. Finally, we found evidence of uncertainty at the registration date but not at the time of the shareholder meeting.

The Board Value Protection Function in Young, Mature and Family Firms

“…In view of generalizable managerial and policy implications, our results strengthen the theoretical rationale of separating BVC and BVP. As mentioned above, several national governance systems give public firms considerable leeway in choosing their governance structure regarding one‐tier or two‐tier boards (Hornuf, Mohamed and Schwienbacher, ). The most prominent example is Societas Europaea (SE), a European‐wide form of public company under the European governance law introduced in 2004.…”