The Impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act on the Cost of Going Public

This paper examines the impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), a legal framework intended to increase transparency and accountability of listed companies, on the cost of going public in the US. We expect SOX to increase the direct cost of going public, but decrease the underpricing because of reduced asymmetric information. Our main results corroborate these hypotheses. First, we find an increase in the cost of going public of 90 bp of gross proceeds. Second, we record a reduction in underpricing of 6 pp, which is related to a reduced offer price adjustment. This supports our hypothesis that SOX represents a mechanism to reduce asymmetric information.asymmetric information, auditing and legal fees, bookbuilding, IPO, flotation cost, going public, partial adjustment phenomenon, propensity score matching, selection bias, SOX, underpricing, underwriting fees

The impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley act on the cost of going public

This paper examines the impact of SOX on the total cost and the component cost of going public. First, we document a statistically significant increase in non-underwriting expenses of 0.8 percentage points after the introduction of SOX, which is mostly due to an increase in accounting and legal fees. Because of the fixed-cost character of this component cost, smaller issues show a much greater percentage increase than larger ones. Second, we demonstrate a highly significant reduction in underpricing in the magnitude of about 4 percentage points. This result is size-independent, and in accordance with the view that SOX reduces adverse selection costs. Third, we find that on average the total flotation costs have decreased between 3 and 3.5 percentage points in the post-SOX period. However, for smaller companies the reduction in underpricing does not compensate anymore for the increase in non-underwriting expenses (i.e., accounting and legal fees). Therefore, the positive impact of SOX on the costs of going public decreases with smaller offering sizes. --Sarbanes-Oxley,SOX,IPO,Going Public,Adverse Selection

Applying process integration methods to target for electricity production from industrial waste heat using Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) technology

This paper presents the results of an investigation of power production from low temperature excess process heat from a chemical cluster using Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) technology. Process simulations and process integration methods including Pinch Technology and Total Site Analysis (TSA) are used to estimate the potential for electricity production from excess heat from the cluster. Results of a previous TSA study indicate that ca. 192 MWheat of waste heat are available at 84 °C to 55 °C, a suitable temperature range for ORC applications. Process streams especially suitable for ORC power production are identified. Simulation results indicate that 14 MWheat of waste heat are available from a PE-reactor, which can be used to generate ca. 1 MWel. Costs of electricity production calculated range from 70 to 147 €/MWh depending on the cost for ORC integration. Economic risk evaluation indicates that pay-back periods lower than 4.5 years should not be expected at the electricity price and RES-E support (a European support system for renewable electricity) levels considered in this study. CO2 emission reductions of up to 5900 tonnes/year were estimated for the analysed case

Emission factors and chemical characterisation of fine particulate emissions from modern and old residential biomass heating systems determined for typical load cycles

Abstract It is already well known that there are significant differences regarding the emissions, especially particulate matter (PM) emissions, of old and modern as well as automatically and not automatically controlled biomass based residential heating systems. This concerns their magnitude as well as their chemical composition. In order to investigate emission factors for particulate emissions and the chemical compositions of the PM emissions over typical whole day operation cycles, a project on the determination and characterisation of PM emissions from the most relevant small-scale biomass combustion systems was performed at the BIOENERGY 2020+ GmbH, Graz, Austria, in cooperation with the Institute for Process and Particle Engineering, Graz University of Technology. The project was based on test stand measurements, during which relevant operation parameters (gaseous emissions, boiler load, flue gas temperature, combustion chamber temperature etc.) as well as PM emissions have been measured and PM samples have been taken and forwarded to chemical analyses. Firstly, typical whole day operation cycles for residential biomass combustion systems were specified for the test runs. Thereby automatically fed and automatically controlled boilers, manually fed and automatically controlled boilers as well as manually fed stoves were distinguished. The results show a clear correlation between the gaseous emissions (CO and OGC) and the PM1 emissions. It is indicated that modern biomass combustion systems emit significantly less gaseous and PM emissions than older technologies (up to a factor of 100). Moreover, automatically fed systems emit much less gaseous and PM emissions than manually fed batch-combustion systems. PM emissions from modern and automatically controlled systems mainly consist of alkaline metal salts, while organic aerosols and soot dominate the composition of aerosols from old and not automatically controlled systems. As an important result comprehensive data concerning gaseous and PM emissions of different old and modern biomass combustion systems over whole day operation cycles are now available. Derived from these data, correlations between burnout quality, particulate emissions as well as particle composition of the PM emissions can be deduced.</jats:p

Der Campus der Religionen: Eine (noch) nicht umgesetzte interreligiöse Begegnungsstätte

Ein Exkursionsziel im Rahmen der Lehrveranstaltung “Raum als pädagogische Dimension” führte in die Seestadt, spezifischer zum Campus der Religionen in der Seestadt. Ziel der Exkursion war es, das geplante Bauprojekt des Campus der Religionen auf verschiedene Art und Weise mit pädagogischen und religiösen Dimensionen von Raum zu verknüpfen

Green on-site power generation : environmental considerations on small-scale biomass gasifier fuel-cell CHP systems for the residential sector

Contemporary combined heat and power (CHP) systems are often based on fossil fuels, such as natural gas or heating oil. Thereby, small-scale cogeneration systems are intended to replace or complement traditional heating equipment in residential buildings. In addition to space heating or domestic hot water supply, electricity is generated for the own consumption of the building or to be sold to the electric power grid. The adaptation of CHP-systems to renewable energy sources, such as solid biomass applications is challenging, because of feedstock composition and heat integration. Nevertheless, in particular smallscale CHP technologies based on biomass gasification and solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) offer significant potentials, also regarding important co-benefits, such as security of energy supply as well as emission reductions in terms of greenhouse gases or air pollutants. Besides emission or air quality regulations, the development of CHP technologies for clean on-site small-scale power generation is also strongly incentivised by energy efficiency policies for residential appliances, such as e.g. Ecodesign and Energy Labelling in the European Union (EU). Furthermore, solid residual biomass as renewable local energy source is best suited for decentralised operations such as micro-grids, also to reduce long-haul fuel transports. By this means such distributed energy resource technology can become an essential part of a forward-looking strategy for net zero energy or even smart plus energy buildings. In this context, this paper presents preliminary impact assessment results and most recent environmental considerations from the EU Horizon 2020 project "FlexiFuel-SOFC" (Grant Agreement no. 641229), which aims at the development of a novel CHP system, consisting of a fuel flexible smallscale fixed-bed updraft gasifier technology, a compact gas cleaning concept and an SOFC for electricity generation. Besides sole system efficiencies, in particular resource and emission aspects of solid fuel combustion and net electricity effects need to be considered. The latter means that vastly less emission intensive gasifier-fuel cell CHP technologies cause significant less fuel related emissions than traditional heating systems, an effect which is further strengthened by avoided emissions from more emission intensive traditional grid electricity generation. As promising result, operation "net" emissions of such on-site generation installations may be virtually zero or even negative. Additionally, this paper scopes central regulatory instruments for small-scale CHP systems in the EU to discuss ways to improve the framework for system deployment