Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1970. / Typescript. Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

The literatures on venture financing mainly focus on proposing resolutions of entrepreneurial moral hazard. However, those researches ignore the fact that venture capital firms might behave opportunistically as well. Hence, this paper offers an effective mechanism to resolve the double moral hazard raised between venture capital firms and entrepreneurs. Three main conclusions are drawn as follow: It is shown that although convertible preferred stock could prevent venture capital firms from opportunistic behavior, it has poor efficiency in dealing with entrepreneurial moral hazard. On the other hand, staged financing, as opposed to convertible preferred stock, could effectively mitigate entrepreneurial moral hazard, but hardly avert from moral hazard raised from venture capital firms. In its conclusion, this study illustrates that both convertible preferred stock and staged financing act as an effective complementary mechanism for each other. Compared with any single approach, this joint mechanism could relatively resolve a certain extent of double moral hazard.

This study provides information about convertible preferreds generally and, in particular, those used in financing mergers during the period 1968-1984. Specifically, the following topics are examined: (1) traditional corporate motives for the use of convertible preferreds as a financing means in mergers and acquisitions, (2) annual data about convertible preferreds' issuance by volume and purpose for the period 1968-1984, (3) average annual returns of merger-related convertible preferreds and average annual returns of common stock of the same companies for the period 1968-1980, (4) performance of convertible preferreds in relation to the market in general, and (5) the future of convertible preferreds as a financing instrument in merger activity.