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In 2003, the German Stock Exchange instituted the Prime Standard as the highest regulated stock market segment in Germany. We analyze the firms’ delisting decisions from this market segment between 2003 and 2015, with a focus on different delisting reasons and firm characteristics. We identify 518 firms that listed on the Prime Standard at least once during the sample period of which 243 firms left this market segment. Of these firms, 107 down-listed and transferred to lower market segments and 136 firms exited the public equity market for the following reasons: 61 firms merged, 53 were insolvent, and 22 firms went private. Using cross-sectional and firm-fixed effects logit regressions, we provide new evidence for firms’ market segment and delisting decisions. Consistent with a cost–benefit analysis, we observe that inferior growth opportunities, low stock liquidity, smaller firm size, poor operating performance, higher audit fees, and more agency conflicts increase the probability that firms opt for a less regulated stock market segment or voluntarily go private. This raises the important issue of securities market reforms that best meet firms and investors preferences.
In most European countries, the number of exchange-listed firms has begun declining subsequent to the global financial crisis in 2008/2009. In the U.S., these numbers had already started to decrease one decade earlier. We investigate how the global financial crisis encouraged family and non-family firms in Germany to transfer from the highest to a lower stock market segment. Using logit and firm-fixed effects regressions, we provide several explanations why we observe a higher propensity of family firms relative to non-family firms to migrate to a lower market segment subsequent to the financial crisis. Explanations are lower investments during the financial crisis, decreasing growth opportunities and operating performance as well as lower stock market quality. Consequently, many family firms reassessed their listing benefits and costs after the financial crisis as well as their initial market segment decision. In contrast, the transfer reasons for non-family firms are often a lower performance and financial difficulties.
In this discussion that took place in Helsinki last June, three European financial economists and a leading authority on U.S. corporate governance consider the relative strengths and weaknesses of the world's two main corporate financing and governance systems: the Anglo-American market-based system, with its dispersed share ownership, lots of takeovers, and an otherwise vigorous market for corporate control; and the relationship-based, or “main bank,” system associated with Japan, Germany, and continental Europe generally. The distinguishing features of the relationship-based system are large controlling shareholders, including the main banks themselves, and few takeovers or other signs of a well-functioning corporate control market. Given the steady increase in the globalization of business and international diversification by large institutional investors, the panelists were asked to address the question: can we expect one of these two systems to prevail over time, or will both systems continue to coexist, while seeking to adopt some of the most valuable aspects of the other?