Maurizio Murgia

Free University of Bozen-Bolzano | Unibolzano · Faculty of Economics and Management

In this chapter, we review the main findings of empirical studies of asset sales. Nonfinancial firms generally sell individual assets or a portfolio of real assets (e.g., timberland, natural resources, buildings, ships, airplanes, factories, plants, machinery, equipment), while banks can sell either real or single financial assets or a portfolio/pa...

How and where are corporate assets traded? In this chapter, we describe how corporate asset markets work and how a generic asset transaction is designed and structured.

Theoretical models of asset sales view those transactions either as a means to improve firm asset efficiency or as a means to raise capital. Divestiture decision models assume that divestiture is motivated by an attempt to restructure firms’ asset mix and business combinations, with most of the literature in this area focusing on exogenous factors...

What are the main factors leading distressed firms to sell assets in and out of bankruptcy court? What are the performance outputs for the distressed firms? Is it possible to identify fire sales, when assets are sold at a discount price compared to their fundamental values? In this chapter, we review major empirical findings about these issues in t...

In a new world characterized by more frequent and richer flows of information, with plenty of available external capital, how will the – simultaneous – investment and divestment decisions be affected? This book discusses in detail the main features and relevance of asset sales as an integral component of many companies’ growth strategies in the cur...

We examine both displayed and non-displayed orders sent by all investors to the electronic central limit order book of the Italian stock exchange Borsa Italiana (BI). Extant literature relies on trades as basic level of observation for the lack of data. Our unique dataset enables us to reconstruct the evolution of the order book and trades over tim...

What are the distinguishing characteristics of the CEO labour market in the financial sector? How has this market evolved, particularly after the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent regulation of CEO and bank manager pay structures? In this chapter, we discuss answers to these questions, highlighting similarities and differences between the fi...

Do the personal and professional characteristics of CEOs play a role in the performance and risk-exposure of the largest European financial conglomerates? Are their compensation structures alike? In this chapter, we empirically test these relationships, highlighting the main differences with the results reported in the literature and addressing fut...

If bank CEOs are special, as each bank is, do the characteristics of banks influence the ways that CEOs make complex and non-routine strategic decisions? Do CEOs leave their mark or have a personal style when making investment, financing and other strategic decisions? Moreover, given the incentives for risk-taking implicit in CEO remuneration contr...

We study a sample of the world's largest financial conglomerates from 15 countries and we track their largest divestitures over the period 2005–2016. We develop a novel market-based metric to analyse the impact of divestitures on financial conglomerate excess value, and our findings point to divestitures having a significant impact on financial con...

This book thoroughly explores the characteristics and importance of bank CEOs against the backdrop of growing awareness of the social implications of CEO behavior for the performance and stability of the financial and economic system. After an introductory section on the relevance of CEOs in the banking industry, the connections between the bank CE...

We build the network of the top 190 Italian quoted companies during the two financial crises of 2008-2009 (US credit crisis) and 2010-2011 (European sovereign debt crisis) and compare its structure to the pre-crises years, using both minimum spanning trees and the full network with thresholds. We also analyze the centrality and compactness of indus...

We study a sample of the world’s largest financial conglomerates from 15 countries and we track their largest divestitures over the period 2005-2016. We develop a novel market-based metric to analyse the impact of divestitures on financial conglomerate excess value, and our findings point to divestitures having a significant impact on financial con...

Various aspects of corporate governance in the process of corporate restructurings are analyzed using the sample of completed spin-offs in 12 European countries between 1989 and 2005. We show that spin-off decisions are often triggered by firm’s governance earthquakes, such as an appointment of a new CEO or a takeover threat. Abnormal long-run stoc...

This article presents the technical aspects of designing and building a historical database of the Italian Stock Market. The database contains daily market data from 1973 to 2011 and is constructed by merging two main digital sources and several other hand-collected data sources. We analyzed and developed semiautomatic tools to deal with problems r...

We examine both displayed and non-displayed orders sent by all investors to the electronic central limit order book of the Italian stock exchange Borsa Italiana (BI). Extant literature relies on trades as basic level of observation for the lack of data. Our unique dataset enables us to reconstruct the evolution of the order book and trades over tim...

Using all completed spin-offs in twelve European countries between 1989 and 2005 we show that spin-off decisions are often triggered by firm’s governance earth-quakes, such as an appointment of a new CEO or a takeover threat. Abnormal long-run stock returns and operating performance are observed for spin-off firms only, and mostly for internally-gr...

We are grateful to Yakov Amihud, Gordon Gemmill, Robert White and participants at EFMA meetings for helpful comments and suggestions. We also thank Luca Filippa of the Italian Exchange and CED Borsa for providing us with the data used here.

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between common risk factors and average returns for Italian stocks. Our research has identified the Italian stock market's economic variables by using the results from factor analyses and time series regressions. We study several multi-factor models combining the relevant macroeconomic variables with t...

We study the stock market valuation of mergers and acquisitions in the European banking industry. Based on a sample of very large deals observed from 1988 to 1997 we document that, on average, at the announcement time the size-adjusted combined performance of both the bidder and the target is statistically significant and economically relevant. Alt...

To investigate the effect of taxation on stock price and trading volume around the ex-dividend day, we use the Italian Stock Market, where dividends on two classes of stock are taxed differently. When all investors face identical tax rates on dividends (holders of savings stocks), we find that the average price decline between the cum-and the ex-di...

The higher taxation of dividends in the United States gave rise to theories that explain why companies pay dividends. Tax-based signaling models propose that the higher tax on dividends is a necessary condition to make them informative about companies' values. In Germany, where dividends are not tax-disadvantaged and in fact are taxed lower for mos...

This paper explores a new econometric approach for measuring mutual fund performance when managers use a set of public information about the state of the economy to determine investment strategies. We apply the approach on a monthly sample of 37 stock and balanced Italian mutual funds over the 1988-1994 period. Our model captures significant moveme...

To investigate the effect of taxation on stock price and trading volume around the ex-dividend day, we use the Italian stock market, where dividends on two classes of stock are taxed differently. We find that the weighted average of investors’ tax rates is reflected in the ex-day prices and the variance of the relative tax rate across investors is...

This paper studies the impact of the stock market microstructure on return volatility and on the value discovery process in the Milan Stock Exchange. The primary trading mechanism employed by this exchange is a call market, which is usually preceded and followed by trading in a continuous market. We find that the opening transaction in the continuo...