The effect of corporate restructuring on the shareholders’ value: the case of GEC/Marconi

GEC/Marconi’s transformation from a diversified conglomerate to a focused telecommunications and information technology company was an eventful and rambling transmission that resulted in the deterioration of shareholders’ value. It represents one of the most dramatic falls from grace in British corporate history and one of the greatest corporate governance fiascos of all time. The study investigates the wealth effects of Marconi’s sell-offs and acquisitions on its shareholders’ value by calculating the abnormal returns on the announcement days of all the disposals/acquisition during 1996-2002. The results support the view that shareholders’ value increases when a company proceeds to corporate sell-offs to pursue a focus strategy. However, the authors conjecture that GEC/Marconi has destroyed shareholders’ value through these disposals/acquisitions because of several mistakes, such as being prone to heavy debt

Strategic options for the newspaper publishing companies.

Tevens verschenen als: Research Memorandum / METEOR, Universiteit Maastricht. - (RM04003)

The Reconstruction of American Journalism

Explores the history and changing landscape of American journalism as well as the need to preserve independent, original, and credible print news reporting. Considers the roles of the Internet, collaborations among newspapers, and foundation support

Liberalization of Trade in Services and Productivity Growth in Korea

This paper investigates the changes in productivity growth rates of Korean service and manufacturing subsectors in relation to the liberalization of trade in services. Since Korea underwent accelerated liberalization of the service sector in the 1990s, we try to examine whether the service subsectors which were liberalized, and the manufacturing subsectors which use liberalized services as inputs, experienced productivity gains in this period.liberalization, trade services, Korea

Financial news journalism: a post-Enron analysis of approaches towards economic and financial news production in the UK

The collapse of Enron and other corporate scandals have raised concerns about the efficacy of financial journalism. Based on research on where reporters get their ideas for stories and how they approach their work, this article explores the particular circumstances in which production of financial and economic news takes place. The author argues that, while reporters are generally highly sceptical about ‘spin’ and strongly inclined towards highlighting instances of corporate underperformance and mismanagement, the circumstances and constraints they work within nonetheless make it unlikely that financial irregularities obscured within company accounts will be detected on a routine or consistent basis. Moreover, the way in which the commercial sector is organized (with in-depth analysis generally confined to specialist media whose audiences are already financially literate) means that the task of facilitating a sound public grasp over the significance of financial and economic news developments is largely being neglected

College or Career?

As would-be students weigh one of the most important decisions of their lives, society in general and higher education in particular are sending mixed messages about affordability

Information, Capital Gains Taxes & New York Stock Exchange

We present evidence regarding the response of stock prices in the New York Stock Exchange to news about capital gains taxes. If information about an upcoming event becomes available, then it should be reflected in prices as soon as the news about it arrives. In the 1980 – 2003 period there are 2383 newspapers articles that address upcoming changes in capital gains taxes. From these articles, we construct two indicator functions to represent information. One that corresponds to news about the upcoming decreases in taxes and the other increases in taxes. Our results indicate that information regarding the event is significant in explaining firm returns.