IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ids/ijeven/v11y2019i1p24-46.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The success of the activist investor Guy Wyser-Pratte in Continental Europe

Author

Listed:
  • Alexander Bassen
  • Dirk Schiereck
  • Philipp Schüler

Abstract

This paper analyses the investments of US activist investor Guy Wyser-Pratte in listed companies in Germany, France, Austria and Switzerland between the years 2001 and 2011. Wyser-Pratte is the best known single activist investor in Continental Europe whose investments have typically been followed intensively by the press. For the first time, this study examines the investment activities of a single activist investor with key focus on Continental Europe and complements the few existing studies on single activist investors and their focus on Anglo-Saxon jurisdictions. The results show that he approaches poor performing companies and that his investment activities increase the short- and long-term shareholder value. Key differentiator to existing research is the focus of Wyser-Pratte on improving the profitability of his target companies. This new insight can be interpreted as an indicator that value generation by shareholder activism works different in the institutional setting of Continental Europe.

Suggested Citation

  • Alexander Bassen & Dirk Schiereck & Philipp Schüler, 2019. "The success of the activist investor Guy Wyser-Pratte in Continental Europe," International Journal of Entrepreneurial Venturing, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 11(1), pages 24-46.
    • Handle: RePEc:ids:ijeven:v:11:y:2019:i:1:p:24-46
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=96637
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Havranek, Tomas & Bajzík, Josef & Irsova, Zuzana & Novak, Jiri, 2023. "Does Shareholder Activism Create Value? A Meta-Analysis," CEPR Discussion Papers 18233, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Barros, Victor & Guedes, Maria João & Santos, Joana & Sarmento, Joaquim Miranda, 2023. "Shareholder activism and firms’ performance," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ids:ijeven:v:11:y:2019:i:1:p:24-46. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sarah Parker (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalID=123 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.