Long Term Changes in Voting Power and Control Structure following the Unification of Dual Class Shares

We follow the evolution of ownership structure in a sample of 80 Israeli companies that unified their dual-class shares in the 1990s, and compare it with a control sample of firms that maintained their dual share structure at least until 2000. Our main findings are as follows. First, controlling shareholders offset the dilution of voting rights they incurred upon unification by: 1) increasing their holdings prior to the unification (ex-ante preparation), and 2) by buying shares afterwards; by the end of the sample period their voting power was only marginally lower than in the control sample. This suggests that marginal voting rights are important to controlling shareholders even beyond the 50% threshold. Second, share unifications were not associated with much change in the identity of controlling shareholders. Third, the proportion of firms affiliated with pyramidal business groups in the sample of unifying firms was lower than in the population of listed firms as a whole and not different from that in the control sample, suggesting that pyramidal ownership structures did not replace dual class shares. Finally, unifying firms did not exhibit a substantial improvement in their performance and valuation in comparison with the control sample. We conclude that the regulatory attempt to enforce one share-one vote yielded, at best, a minor improvement in corporate governance.Dual class shares, corporate governance

High temperature syntheses of novel nitrido- and oxonitrido-silicates and sialons using rf furnaces

The high-temperature reaction of pure metals with silicon diimide Si(NH)2 in a specially developed radiofrequency furnace has been successfully applied to the synthesis of novel highly condensed nitridosilicates. With SrCO3 as an additional starting material this procedure has now been extended to the synthesis of oxonitridosilicates and oxonitridoaluminosilicates (sialons). Two novel sialons SrSiAl2 O3 N2 [space group P21 21 21 (no. 19), a=491.89(6), b=789.73(7), c=1134.94(18) pm, Z=4] and SrErSiAl3 O3 N4 [space group P63 mc (no. 186), a=606.53(3), c=985.90(8) pm, Z=2] have been obtained as coarsely crystalline materials. According to single crystal X-ray diffraction both compounds adopt structure types which are unprecedented for sialons. They derive from the nitridosilicates LnSi3 N5 (Ln=La, Ce, Pr, Nd) and MYbSi4 N7 (M=Sr, Ba, Eu), respectively, by partial substitution of Si by Al and N by O. For SrSiAl2 O3 N2 and SrErSiAl3 O3 N4 an unambiguous crystallographic differentiation between the tetrahedral centres (Al and Si) as well as the bridging atoms of the framework structures (N and O) seems reasonable

Panic behavior and the performance of circuit breakers: Empirical evidence

Stock Markets;Financial Crisis

Student Network Centrality and Academic Performance: Evidence from United Nations University

In this paper we empirically studied the relationship between network centrality and academic performance among a group of 47 PhD students from UNU-MERIT institute. We conducted an independent email survey and relied on social networks theory as well as standard econometric procedures to analyse the data. We found a significant reversed U-shaped relation between network centrality and students' academic performance. We controlled our results by several node's characteristics such as age, academic background, and research area. Additional evidence shows that there is a negative impact of age on academic performance at PhD student level. Contributions of this paper can refer to the input into studies that aim to explore peereffect. Also it contributes to the methodological approach by combining elements of network analysis and econometric theories. This study demonstrates that when evaluating the impact of network centrality on performance, there is no significant difference between various network centrality measurements.Networks analysis, Network centrality, Peer-effect, Academic performance

Johnston v R&J Leather (Scotland).

This article discusses Johnston v R&J Leather (Scotland) Ltd (SAC) on whether, in circumstances where, despite immediate and unequivocal rejection of a leather suite as well as repeated attempts at making contact over a period of months, the buyers had been ignored by the sellers, the buyers were entitled to dispose of the goods as they wished without losing their right to repayment of the purchase price