Confidence and Capital Raising

We investigate whether the confidence of management teams, defined as the certainty about handling what one desires to do, affects the capacity of firms to raise external capital. Drawing on psychology research, we run an experiment in which participants are asked to assess the confidence of the management teams of 515 initial coin offerings (ICOs) by appraising their pictures. Controlling for venture and offering characteristics, we find a positive association between confidence and the fundraising amount. The results are robust to alternative estimation methods and other visual traits such as attractiveness and intelligence. Our study highlights the importance of using images as a channel to communicate with prospective investors in alternative finance

The geography of initial coin offerings

Initial coin offerings (ICOs) are a rapidly growing phenomenon wherein entrepreneurial ventures raise funds for the development of blockchain-based businesses. Although they have recently sprouted up all over the world, raising millions of dollars for early-stage firms, few empirical studies are available to help understand the emergence of ICOs across countries. Based on the population of 915 ICOs issued in 187 countries between January 2017 and March 2018, our study reveals that ICOs take place more frequently in countries with developed financial systems, public equity markets, and advanced digital technologies. The availability of investment-based crowdfunding platforms is also positively associated with the emergence of ICOs, while debt and private equity markets do not provide similar effects. Countries with ICO-friendly regulations have more ICOs, whereas tax regimes are not clearly related to ICOs

Does equity crowdfunding democratize entrepreneurial finance?

This paper investigates whether gender, age, ethnicity, and geography affect the choice of equity crowdfunding offerings vs initial public offerings (IPO) on traditional stock markets and whether these characteristics increase the likelihood of a successful offering. Using 167 equity offerings in Crowdcube and 99 equity offerings on London’s Alternative Investment Market raising between £300,000 and £5 m, we find that companies with younger top management team (TMT) members are both more likely to launch equity crowdfunding offerings than IPOs and have higher chances to successfully complete an equity crowdfunding offering. Remotely located companies are more likely to launch equity crowdfunding offerings than IPOs and have higher chances to successfully complete an equity crowdfunding offering. On the contrary, female entrepreneurs do not have higher chances to raise funds in equity crowdfunding. Minority entrepreneurs do not have higher chances of successfully raising capital but do attract a higher number of investors. Overall, our evidence provides empirical guidance for the first time to the oft-repeated policy claim that equity crowdfunding democratizes entrepreneurial finance by providing access to funding to underrepresented groups of potential entrepreneurs

Private equity investment criteria : an experimental conjoint analysis of venture capital, business angels, and family offices

We use an experimental conjoint analysis to investigate the investment criteria of 749 private equity investors, distinguishing between family offices, business angels, venture capital funds, growth equity funds, and leveraged buyout funds. Our results indicate that revenue growth is the most important investment criterion, followed by the value-added of product/service, the management team's track record, and profitability. Regarding differences across investor types, we find that family offices, growth equity funds, and leveraged buyout funds place a higher value on profitability as compared to business angels and venture capital funds. Venture capital funds, in turn, pay more attention to companies' revenue growth, business models, and current investors. With these results, our study contributes to the corporate finance literature by deepening our understanding of how different types of private equity investors make investment decisions

Exploring the third type of agency problem: an empirical study of the impact of debt suspension programmes on SMEs’ resource allocations

This study explores the third type of agency problem concerning the tension between shareholders and stakeholders. It does so by analysing whether small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) eligible for a temporary debt suspension programme favour the short-term interests of their shareholders or stakeholders, or the firm's long-term competitiveness. Using information from an Italian debt moratorium programme aimed at alleviating the financial pressure on SMEs during the financial crisis, we built a rich database of 37,465 limited liability companies eligible for the programme between 2006 and 2015. We then used a difference-in-differences model to analyse the data. Our findings indicate that the debt suspension programme, designed to help eligible firms survive temporary financial constraints, did promote their long-term competitiveness. However, it also produced some undesirable consequences, such as benefiting shareholders in the short term at the expense of other key stakeholders

Incumbents’ attitude toward intrafamily succession:an investigation of its antecedents

Incumbents’ attitude toward intrafamily succession (IFS) is a critical individual-level determinant of family firms’ IFS intention, which is, in turn, an important component of family business essence. Knowledge about its antecedents, however, is fragmented and very limited. Drawing on the theory of planned behavior and general attitude literature, hypotheses about the situational and individual antecedents of family firm incumbents’ attitude toward IFS were developed and tested with a sample of 274 Italian family firm incumbents. Results show that incumbents’ attitude toward IFS is indeed influenced by both situational and individual antecedents as well as by their interactions

Monetary policy and venture capital markets

We assess the impact of monetary policy (i.e., central bank interest rates) on the activity of venture capitalists (VC). Using data from 31 countries from 2004 to 2019, we find that VC firms’ fundraising activity increases when interest rates become negative. We explain this finding by referring to the principal-agent relationship between general and limited partners of VC firms in combination with behavioral finance arguments. Specifically, we identify three channels pertaining to a legal motivation (i.e., legislative hurdles and litigation risks), a liquidity motivation (i.e., substitution effect relative to other asset classes), and behavioral biases (i.e., mental accounting, conservatism, disposition effect, or prospect theory)

Corporate governance with crowd investors in innovative entrepreneurial finance: Nominee structure and coinvestment in equity crowdfunding

In innovative entrepreneurial finance markets, ventures raising funds target a set of heterogeneous “digital” investors using distinct governance mechanisms. We focus on the micro-functioning of equity crowdfunding (ECF) markets by investigating the differences in terms of agency issues and potential principal-principal conflicts arising from the coinvestment of angels or venture capitalists alongside crowd investors. The nominee governance structure, by allocating the same ownership and voting rights to all investors and aggregating them into a special purpose vehicle with the nominee company as sole legal owner, can reconcile such conflicts by mitigating agency and coordination problems. This structure enables angels and venture capital funds to exploit the wisdom of the crowd and crowd investors to free ride on the former’s due diligence and monitoring. Using a platform governance lens, this paper evaluates the performance of nominee versus direct ownership structure. Based a large sample of 1,103 successful and unsuccessful initial campaigns on the three largest equity crowdfunding platforms in the UK (namely Seedrs, Crowdcube, and SyndicateRoom), we document that nominee firms exhibit better short run and long run performance. Our results hold inter-platform between crowdfunding platforms as well as intra-platform, as confirmed by a quasi-natural experiment when the nominee approach became an option for startups raising capital on the Crowdcube platform. Our findings offer valuable insights to platforms and policymakers who could channel tax incentives via nominee schemes