Research

Publications

  • "Did They Live Happily Ever After? The Fate of Restructured Firms after Hedge Fund Activism," (with Wonik Choi), 2022, Financial Review 57(4), 925-947.

This paper studies the long-term effect of hedge fund activism on distressed firms by tracing the post-emergence performance of firms that successfully resolved distress. We find that the firms restructured with hedge funds' intervention, compared to their counterparts that emerged without such intervention, are more likely to lose their public status, enjoy higher financial stability, and invest more. Notably, the gap in financial strength lasts at least three years after emergence. These findings suggest that the efficiency gains brought by hedge fund activism during the restructuring process tend to positively impact the restructured firms' financial soundness in the post-intervention period.


  • "The Economics of PIPEs," (with Michael Schwert and Micahel Weisbach), 2021, Journal of Financial Intermediation 45(1), 100832

Private investments in public equities (PIPEs) are an important source of finance for public corporations. PIPE investor returns decline with holding periods, while time to exit depends on the issue’s registration status and underlying liquidity. We estimate PIPE investor returns adjusting for these factors. Our analysis, which is the first to estimate returns to investors rather than issuers, indicates that the average PIPE investor holds the stock for 384 days and earns an abnormal return of 19.7%. More constrained firms tend to issue PIPEs to hedge funds and private equity funds in offerings that have higher expected returns and higher volatility. PIPE investors’ abnormal returns appear to reflect compensation for providing capital to financially constrained firms.


We examine the way a fraudulent firm’s pre- and post-misconduct CSR engagement is associated with its stock performance to investigate the reputational role of CSR. In the short-term, firms with good previous CSR performance suffer smaller market penalties upon the revelation of financial wrongdoings, supporting the buffer effect as opposed to the backfire effect of a good social image. In contrast, we find no evidence that the misbehaving firms’ post-misconduct CSR efforts offer any economic benefit. In summary, investments in CSR could be an effective means to help firms weather the corporate storm, but only when they are made ex-ante.


Prior literature routinely assumes symmetric cultural distance (CD) in a given country pair, suggesting an identical role for the home and host countries. However, if the absolute CD is perceived differently depending on the acquirer’s home base, it may yield disparate effects in cross-border M&A (CB M&A) transactions. Consistently, we find that the relationship between CD and CB M&A premiums is not uniform, but varies by acquirer origin. While we find a strong negative association between CD and premiums when U.S. firms bid for foreign targets, no such negative association is observed when foreign bidders evaluate U.S. targets. Using traveler flows, student exchanges, and previous acquisitions as proxies for directional cross-cultural familiarity, we provide evidence that familiarity with the target’s national culture is related to the magnitude of CD discount in a systematic way and thus explains the observed asymmetry. Our findings highlight the existence, as well as the source, of the asymmetric property in the relationship between CD and target premiums in CB M&A.


Indirect incentives exist in the money management industry when good current performance increases future inflows of capital, leading to higher future fees. For the average hedge fund, indirect incentives are at least 1.4 times as large as direct incentives from incentive fees and managers’ personal stakes in the fund. Combining direct and indirect incentives, manager wealth increases by at least $0.39 for a $1 increase in investor wealth. Younger and more scalable hedge funds have stronger flow-performance relations, leading to stronger indirect incentives. These results have a number of implications for our understanding of incentives in the asset management industry.


This paper investigates the role of activist hedge funds in the restructuring of a sample of 469 firms that attempted to resolve distress either out of court, in conventional Chapter 11, or via prepackaged restructuring. Activist hedge funds strategically gain a position of influence in the restructuring of economically viable firms with contracting problems that prevent efficient restructuring without outside intervention. I find that hedge fund involvement is associated with a higher probability of completing prepackaged restructurings, faster restructurings, and greater debt reduction. Overall, the evidence in this paper suggests that activist hedge funds can create value by enabling more efficient contracting.


During the past decade non-bank institutional investors are increasingly taking larger roles in the corporate lending than they historically have played. These non-bank institutional lenders typically have higher required rates of return than banks, but invest in the same loan facilities. In a sample of 20,031 leveraged loan facilities originated between 1997 and 2007, facilities including a non-bank institution in their syndicates have higher spreads than otherwise identical bank-only facilities. Contrary to risk-based explanations of this finding, non-bank facilities are priced with premia relative to bank-only facilities in the same loan package. These non-bank premia are substantially larger when a hedge or private equity fund is one of the syndicate members. Consistent with the notion that firms are willing to pay a premium when loan facilities are particularly important to them, the non-bank premia are larger when borrowing firms face financial constraints and when capital is less available from banks.