How Preussag became TUI : kissing too many toads can make you a toad

In the period 1997-2004, Preussag, a diversified German conglomerate of old economy businesses, changed itself into TUI, a company focused almost entirely on tourism and logistics. This paper analyzes how this strategy was executed and how it contributed to Preussag’s underperformance of the stock market. We collect 417 announcements of acquisitions, financial disclosures and other news and disentangle the impact of different parts of the company’s strategy. We find that only the divestitures created value, that the strategy to invest in tourism destroyed value, and that the acquisition premiums Preussag paid were mostly unjustified. Bad luck like the events of September 11, 2001 cannot account for the poor performance of the stock. Poor management resulted from poor governance, combining a state-owned bank as the largest shareholder, board interlocks, and insufficient managerial incentives. The case shows how divestiture programs increase the liquid resources available to management beyond free operating cash flows and casts doubt on the positive governance role of institutional blockholders

Osteopontin regulates human glioma cell invasiveness and tumor growth in mice

Human malignant glioma cells are characterized by local invasion. In the present study, we investigated the role of osteopontin (OPN) in the invasiveness of human glioma cells isolated from grade IV tumors. We found that the expression levels of OPN in these cell lines paralleled matrix metalloproteinase-2 (MMP-2) expression and cell invasiveness potential. When U87MG glioma cells (with a high-OPN expression level) were stably transformed with specific small hairpin RNA to knock down OPN expression, MMP-2 secretion, cell invasiveness, and tumor growth in implanted brains were dramatically reduced. Conversely, forced expression of OPN in GBM-SKH glioma cells (which expressed OPN at a low level) increased MMP-2 secretion, enhanced cell invasiveness, and increased tumor growth in a rodent xenograft model. Expression of OPN was associated with increased expression of vimentin and decreased expression of glial fibrillary acidic protein. Treatment of glioma cells with 5-aza-2′-deoxycytidine (5-aza-dC) suppressed OPN expression in a concentration-dependent manner. Suppression of OPN expression by 5-aza-dC was associated with reductions in MMP-2 secretion, vimentin expression, cell invasion, intravasation, and tumor growth. These data suggest that OPN may play important roles in regulating cell invasion in glioma cells and that 5-aza-dC may serve as a therapeutic agent for human gliomas

Capital Gains Taxes and Asset Prices: The Impact of Tax Awareness and Procrastination

We argue that the impact of capital gains taxation on asset pricing depends on the tax awareness of market participants. While institutional investors should be generally well-informed about tax regulations, private investors have only limited tax knowledge and resources. As a result, market reactions on tax law changes may be delayed if a considerable fraction of market participants is not fully tax-aware. In line with our argument, we find evidence that the introduction of a previously announced German flat tax on private capital gains in 2009 resulted in a temporarily strong and significant increase of trading volumes, daily returns and asset prices. Our research implies that tax law changes provide an opportunity for well-informed investors to generate arbitrage benefits. Corresponding to our estimate, the capital gains tax resulted in an increase demand for shares of 160 % as well as in an price surplus of about 7.4 % within the last two trading days 2008

The Long-Term Consequences of the Global 1918 Influenza Pandemic: A Systematic Analysis of 117 IPUMS International Census Data Sets

Several country-level studies, including a prominent one for the United States, have identified long-term effects of in-utero exposure to the 1918 influenza pandemic (also known as the Spanish Flu) on economic outcomes in adulthood. In-utero conditions are theoretically linked to adult health and socioeconomic status through the fetal origins or Barker hypothesis. Historical exposure to the Spanish Flu provides a natural experiment to test this hypothesis. Although the Spanish Flu was a global phenomenon, with around 500 million people infected worldwide, there exists no comprehensive global study on its long-term economic effects. We attempt to close this gap by systematically analyzing 117 Census data sets provided by IPUMS International. We do not find consistent global long-term effects of influenza exposure on education, employment and disability outcomes. A series of robustness checks does not alter this conclusion. Our findings indicate that the existing evidence on long-term economic effects of the Spanish Flu is likely a consequence of publication bias

Helicity-dependent cross sections for the photoproduction of π0\pi^0 pairs from nucleons

The double-polarization observable $E$ and helicity-dependent cross sections $\sigma_{1/2}$, $\sigma_{3/2}$ have been measured for the photoproduction of $\pi^0$ pairs off quasi-free protons and neutrons at the Mainz MAMI accelerator with the Crystal Ball/TAPS setup. A circularly polarized photon beam was produced by bremsstrahlung from longitudinally polarized electrons and impinged on a longitudinally polarized deuterated butanol target. The reaction products were detected with an almost $4\pi$ covering calorimeter. The results reveal for the first time the helicity- and isospin-dependent structure of the $\gamma N\rightarrow N\pi^0\pi^0$ reaction. They are compared to predictions from reaction models in view of nucleon resonance contributions and also to a refit of one model that predicted results for the proton and for the neutron target. The comparison of the prediction and the refit demonstrate the large impact of the new data.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Rev. Let