This thesis offers a comparative study of Chinese and the U.S. legislations on the issue of cross-border insolvency. China has included one article concerning this issue in its Enterprise Bankruptcy Law promulgated in 2006. Four years after that, when facing a real case, it is found that the legislation is too preliminary to be used. In the meantime, great efforts have been made among many western countries in order to promote international cooperation on this issue. The United States is one of the most active countries. This thesis analyzes the Chinese version of cross-border insolvency legislation, factor by factor. It also does case study of mostly U.S. cases and some other countries’ cases and tries to find out how the courts interpret the corresponding factors. In doing so, it hopes to improve the Chinese legislation by taking international experience as reference.

This thesis offers a comparative study of Chinese and the U.S. legislations on the issue of cross-border insolvency. China has included one article concerning this issue in its Enterprise Bankruptcy Law promulgated in 2006. Four years after that, when facing a real case, it is found that the legislation is too preliminary to be used. In the meantime, great efforts have been made among many western countries in order to promote international cooperation on this issue. The United States is one of the most active countries. This thesis analyzes the Chinese version of cross-border insolvency legislation, factor by factor. It also does case study of mostly U.S. cases and some other countries’ cases and tries to find out how the courts interpret the corresponding factors. In doing so, it hopes to improve the Chinese legislation by taking international experience as reference.

Going from having bought the most essential at the small shops close to home, better communications and an increasingly consumption oriented lifestyle has created a change in shopping behavior and has led to phenomenon such as shopping centres and more. These are constantly being built in Sweden: in the cities, outside the cities and more recently even in small cities -small cities as for one reason or another have access to a larger customer base which can have businesses to flourish economically. During the first decade of the 21st century, shopping centres have been established along the Swedish/Norwegian border. Since the Norwegian Krone is much stronger than the Swedish Krona Norwegians save a great deal of money on going to Sweden to shop. During the shopping trips to Sweden, it is mostly alcohol, meat, tobacco and candy that are being bought. However, other products such as clothing, technology, household appliances and more are also being purchased, all to save money on the trip. Together these cross border shoppers spent 11, 6 billion in Sweden during the year of 2010. This gives an average spending of approximately 10 900 SEK per cross border shopper on annual basis. Nordby, Töcksfors and Charlottenberg (small cities located in southwestern Sweden) are places characterized by Norwegian cross border shopping. Together, they generate billions every year and this only seems to increase. These places are relatively small in size but have prominent attributes such as proximity to the Norwegian border. Apart from these resorts and shopping centres, there are few or none similar places near the Norwegian border in the rest of Sweden. However, a place which is geographically well located and has a relatively large Norwegian and Swedish customer base is the ski resort of Sälen in west central of Sweden. Sälen is a village located near the Norwegian border, although fairly sparsely populated. The destination has annually about one million official guest nights, based on the 414 000 visitors who stay an average of about 4, 5 days.  Per visit, these tourists individually spend an average of 862 SEK on shopping at the destination. The expenditure of the mountain tourists together with the Norwegian border shoppers makes it very interesting to explore the opportunities for shopping development in terms of a shopping centre in the region of Sälen.

Do participants with external attribution styles outperform participants with internal explanatory styles in pressure-filled situations? Explicit-monitoring theory suggests that performance becomes impaired when conscious attention is devoted to performing a task normally carried out by automatic processes. Attributing potential failure to an external source (e.g., blaming a sudden gust of wind for a poor golf shot) can decrease the negative effects of stereotype threat, a social-psychological predicament known to engender feelings of stress similar to those experienced in pressure-filled situations, by preventing explicit monitoring from taking place. The current study examined whether individual differences in attribution style, as measured by the Attributional Style Questionnaire, affects golf-putting performance under stereotype threat. The present author hypothesized that participants with external explanatory styles would perform better than participants with internal explanatory styles under stereotype threat, because external participants would be predisposed to create external sources to attribute the cause of poor performance.

Using a large sample of mergers and acquisitions from 27 countries over a 16-year period, I investigate how differences in tax and financial reporting policies affect the premium and structure of cross-border mergers and acquisitions. I find evidence that firms pay a premium to reduce the tax risk associated with strict transfer pricing rules. Further analysis segments acquisitions into those that are strictly financial versus those that are more strategic. Financial acquisitions are those where the acquirer is making the purchase for investment purposes rather than strategic reasons. These financial transactions generally lead to less integration between the two companies and therefore less inter-company transactions involving transfer pricing. Evidence based on this segmentation suggests that only differences in transfer pricing risk for non-financial acquisitions are priced. The results suggest that while on average non-financial acquirers will pay a higher premium to reduce transfer pricing risk regardless of industry, only those in highly scrutinized industries with high levels of intangibles, such as pharmaceuticals, will demand a discount for transactions which increase transfer pricing risk. In tests of acquisition structure, I find that shareholder-level capital gain taxes influence the structure of an acquisition. The influence of shareholder-level taxes is reduced by the presence of information asymmetry concerning the acquirer’s stock value. However, higher quality financial reporting reduces information asymmetry and improves the tax efficiency of acquisition structure providing tangible economic benefit to shareholders.

The technology industry is characterized by a greater than usual reliance on intangible assets. During the tech bubble many firms were valued entirely on intangible assets and growth prospects. In the aftermath of the bubble, intangible assets still play an important role as the innovative performance of a firm’s human capital and the value of its patents creates much of the value of high-tech firms. The problem of transferring human capital and knowledge may be further exacerbated when the firms belong to separate national cultures. Investor perception of acquisition announcements may be more favourable if the target workforce is much smaller relative to the bidder, and thus easier to integrate. Also, perceptions may be favourable when the target has a high ratio of intangible assets to total assets, as this may be a proxy for the relative value of the extractible intangible assets. This study uses a sample of 61 acquisition announcements between 1991 and 2004, where both acquirer and target are high-tech firms and accounting and trading data is available from three years prior to three years after the acquisition announcement. There is weak evidence to support the employee ratio hypothesis for bidder returns, and no evidence to support the intangible assets to total assets hypothesis for either bidder or target returns. Additionally, it is found that average bidder abnormal returns during the announcement period (as measured from one day prior to the announcement acquisitions to one day afterwards) are negative but not significantly different from zero, and that average target abnormal returns are positive and significant. Average wealth gains to bidders are negative and to targets are positive over the window from five days prior to the acquisition announcement to five days afterwards. Furthermore, combined wealth gains are negative, indicating the synergistic gains from high-tech cross-border acquisitions are offset by high premiums paid by the bidders for the targets. Relatedness, a lack of tender offers, and non-US acquirer status are demonstrated to be related to negative returns to bidders, whereas tender offers, US-acquirer status, and termination provisions are shown to be related to increased returns to target shareholders. In the long-run, it is found that acquirers experience superior operating cash flow returns when compared to their industry peers, however, the acquirer experiences diminished performance when compared to the combined performance of the pre-acquisition acquirer and target firms.

The European University Viadrina at Frankfurt (Oder) is, due to its location on the German-Polish border and its high rate of international students (40 %), a place predestined to explore the subject of intercultural communication. However, the students in fact do not notice the interculturalism in their everyday lives. German and Polish students form two big groups which are distant from one another and the communicative interaction is very limited. As former studies have already asserted, the contact hypothesis works only under special conditions. The origins of the group formation and the mutual lack of interest are complex. This study especially considers one of all possible aspects and analyses it: failed communication caused by cultural differences. With the analysis of the Critical Incidents, several characteristic fields of culturally-caused conflicts between German and Polish students were able to be identified. (author´s abstract) / Series: WU Online Papers in International Business Communication / Series One: Intercultural Communication and Language Learning

Using a large sample of mergers and acquisitions from 27 countries over a 16-year period, I investigate how differences in tax and financial reporting policies affect the premium and structure of cross-border mergers and acquisitions. I find evidence that firms pay a premium to reduce the tax risk associated with strict transfer pricing rules. Further analysis segments acquisitions into those that are strictly financial versus those that are more strategic. Financial acquisitions are those where the acquirer is making the purchase for investment purposes rather than strategic reasons. These financial transactions generally lead to less integration between the two companies and therefore less inter-company transactions involving transfer pricing. Evidence based on this segmentation suggests that only differences in transfer pricing risk for non-financial acquisitions are priced. The results suggest that while on average non-financial acquirers will pay a higher premium to reduce transfer pricing risk regardless of industry, only those in highly scrutinized industries with high levels of intangibles, such as pharmaceuticals, will demand a discount for transactions which increase transfer pricing risk. In tests of acquisition structure, I find that shareholder-level capital gain taxes influence the structure of an acquisition. The influence of shareholder-level taxes is reduced by the presence of information asymmetry concerning the acquirer’s stock value. However, higher quality financial reporting reduces information asymmetry and improves the tax efficiency of acquisition structure providing tangible economic benefit to shareholders.

The technology industry is characterized by a greater than usual reliance on intangible assets. During the tech bubble many firms were valued entirely on intangible assets and growth prospects. In the aftermath of the bubble, intangible assets still play an important role as the innovative performance of a firm’s human capital and the value of its patents creates much of the value of high-tech firms. The problem of transferring human capital and knowledge may be further exacerbated when the firms belong to separate national cultures. Investor perception of acquisition announcements may be more favourable if the target workforce is much smaller relative to the bidder, and thus easier to integrate. Also, perceptions may be favourable when the target has a high ratio of intangible assets to total assets, as this may be a proxy for the relative value of the extractible intangible assets. This study uses a sample of 61 acquisition announcements between 1991 and 2004, where both acquirer and target are high-tech firms and accounting and trading data is available from three years prior to three years after the acquisition announcement. There is weak evidence to support the employee ratio hypothesis for bidder returns, and no evidence to support the intangible assets to total assets hypothesis for either bidder or target returns. Additionally, it is found that average bidder abnormal returns during the announcement period (as measured from one day prior to the announcement acquisitions to one day afterwards) are negative but not significantly different from zero, and that average target abnormal returns are positive and significant. Average wealth gains to bidders are negative and to targets are positive over the window from five days prior to the acquisition announcement to five days afterwards. Furthermore, combined wealth gains are negative, indicating the synergistic gains from high-tech cross-border acquisitions are offset by high premiums paid by the bidders for the targets. Relatedness, a lack of tender offers, and non-US acquirer status are demonstrated to be related to negative returns to bidders, whereas tender offers, US-acquirer status, and termination provisions are shown to be related to increased returns to target shareholders. In the long-run, it is found that acquirers experience superior operating cash flow returns when compared to their industry peers, however, the acquirer experiences diminished performance when compared to the combined performance of the pre-acquisition acquirer and target firms.

I en pågående globalisering, skapas fler och fler unioner eller liknande handelsavtal, där syftet är att främja den egna regionen och dess markand. Möjligheterna är enorma för företagen inom dessa regioner, då alla barriärer är borta och landsgränserna utsuddade. Detta skapar även hårdare konkurrens och aktörer från andra delar av världen vill komma in på dessa marknader och ta del av vinsterna. Det snabbaste och enklaste sättet att ta sig in på marknaderna är genom förvärv, då befintliga etablerade företag köps upp. Frågan är huruvida dessa regioners marknader reagerar, då ett företag som kommer utifrån regionen köper upp ett företag inom regionen eller om förvärvet sker inom regionen. Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka om det finns någon mätbar skillnad i den abnormala avkastningen vid gränsöverskridande förvärv, som kan härledas till uppköparens ursprung. Fokus ligger på skillnaden mellan företag från den Europeiska Unionen och företag utanför gemenskapen. Vidare skall denna uppsats undersöka lönsamhetsutvecklingen efter genomfört uppköp. Den metoden som har valts för att studera problemet är en eventstudie, som anses vara det mest lämpade vid undersökning av den abnormala avkastningen. En intervju har även genomförts, för att få mer djup i undersökningen och en lönsamhetsundersökning, för att utläsa effekterna hos budföretaget efter förvärvet. I lönsamhetsundersökningen har tre nyckeltal undersökts avkastning på eget kapital, P/E-talet och avkastning på totala tillgångar. Resultatet utav studien visade på att avkastningen hos målföretagen som hade köpare från ett land utanför den Europeiska Unionen var störst. Detta betyder även att de förväntas generera högre lönsamhet enligt den effektiva markandshypotesen. En anledning till att gruppen med icke-EU företag genererade en större överavkastning kan vara att de ”delar med sig” av de förväntade framtida vinsterna i större utsträckning varpå deras budpremie var högre. Vid gränsöverskridande företagsförvärv konkurrerar fler potentiella köpare om företaget vilket driver upp budpremien. Att Sverige inte ingår i eurosamarbetet kan vara en anledning till att färre företag inom unionen konkurrerar om att köpa svenska företag varpå premien och därmed överavkastningen i denna grupp är lägre. Lönsamhetsundersökningen visade på att gruppen med företag från den Europeiska Unionen upplever en minskning av alla de tre nyckeltalen efter det genomförda förvärvet. Gruppen med företag från utanför unionen å andra sidan upplever en ökning av både avkastning på eget kapital och avkastning på totala tillgångar i perioderna efter förvärvet, vilket visar på att förvärvet varit mer lönsamt för dem. Resultatet från lönsamhetsundersökningen stödjer resultatet från evenstudien då gruppen med företag utanför unionen lyckats generera den största lönsamheten varpå den högre premien från dessa företag var berättigad.