This book offers a comprehensive examination of the factors affecting corporate capital structures across 12 European Union countries, focusing on the influence of country-specific, industry-specific and firm-size-related determinants. It provides a comprehensive review of various interpretations of the capital structure concept and offers a detailed characterisation of commonly employed metrics. Furthermore, it offers an overview of capital structure theories and attempts to classify the factors that shape the financial leverage of enterprises within the framework of these theories. Additionally, it draws readers’ attention to contemporary factors potentially affecting corporate financing decisions, such as Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) considerations or technological advances and innovations in finance. It combines theoretical insights with empirical research to explore the direct and indirect impacts of these factors on companies’ financing patterns. Targeting a broad readership including students, Ph.D. candidates, researchers, academics and financial practitioners, the book offers a rich understanding of capital structure optimisation and its significance for enhancing company value. Through its coverage of various capital structure theories, determinants and the role of external and internal factors in capital structure decisions, the book is an essential resource for those interested in the complex nature of these influences within the European landscape. With the exception of Chapter 2, no part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Chapter 2 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license. Any third party material in this book is not included in the OA Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. Please direct any permissions enquiries to the original rightsholder.

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject Business economics - Investment and Finance, grade: 1,5, European School of Business Reutlingen, course: Lecture, language: English, abstract: Taking into consideration the assumptions behind classical capital structures on the one hand and the specific economic environment and the resulting behavior of firms in the emerging European economies on the other hand, it is clear that these extraordinary circumstances (different political and economic systems) influence the determination of the firms' capital structures in these countries in a special way. The goal of this paper is to determine the driving factors for different capital structure choices in emerging European economies, compared to the one we can see for instance in Western European countries. As a result of the underlying research on this topic and also considering the fact that shareholders are slowly gaining influence in businesses in emerging European economies (like Slovenia), the financial principal behavior of these companies will probably remain different from those in mature market economies. One of the most interesting findings regarding the research topic is probably the fact that we can find a re-designed Pecking Order Theory in some Eastern and Central European (CEE) economies.

The following thesis tries to take benefit of the unique setting of a corporate spin-off transaction in order to investigate capital structure determinants. The study reveals evidence that companies involved in a European spin-off transaction allocate financial leverage ratios according to the pecking order theory. Profitability of post-spin-off companies affects financial leverage ratios negatively. Growth, lower financial distress costs and the size of a company influences the financial leverage ratio positively. No relation is observed between non-debt tax shield and financial leverage. Even though post-spin-off companies emerging from the spin-off transaction with lower leverages are associated with higher business risk, no evidence is found that risk influences financial leverage ratios.

'I can fully recommend this book to those interested in the transmission process of monetary policy.' - Harry Garretsen, De Economist Due to financial market imperfections it is imperative to analyse the relationship between financial structure and the monetary policy transmission process in Europe to effectively design and implement European monetary policy. Focusing on the years 1980-1995 and providing empirical evidence for six European countries, namely Germany, France, Italy, the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands, the author discusses whether cross-country variations in financial structure have a systematic relationship with inter-country differences in the monetary transmission process. The analysis of this is invaluable as differences in financial structures across EMU countries may hamper the implementation of a common European monetary policy in the future. The conclusion is that some elements of the financial structure are clearly relevant and applicable for European monetary policy and the monetary transmission process in particular.

Incorporates estimation risk in portfolio choice and also covers a risk measure for retail investment products, understanding and exploiting momentum in stock returns. This book includes: Introduction - Corporate restructuring; mergers and acquisitions in Europe; and the performance of acquisitive companies in the US.