Contributions published at Finance (Alexander Wagner)

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When disaster strikes, the weak suffer mightily, the strong only slightly. That is the lesson from stock market reactions to COVID-19. Strong firms had a robust financial position, advanced environmental and social performance, and were not severely exposed to social distancing and lockdowns. Firms with significant international exposure suffered more, at least at first. The ultimate effects of policy interventions, including those by central banks, have yet to be revealed. The market recovery in the second quarter of 2020 is like a patient recovering from COVID-19: hopeful but still uncertain. Managers and policymakers should project the future with great caution.

Swiss and international institutional investors as well as Swiss issuers were asked in a survey about their current views and preferences on corporate governance in the Swiss market. The questions cover the subjects voting rights, remuneration, corporate social responsibility, board of directors, as well as other current topics. A particular focus is set on corporate social responsibility. The answers of the market participants are compared to each other or to previous surveys. Using descriptive statistics, the survey underlines the relevance of good corporate governance and corporate social responsibility.

Die vorliegende Arbeit zeigt die Entwicklung der Aktienrückkäufe in der Schweiz über die letzten zehn Jahre auf. Im Gegensatz zu den USA hat sich die Ausschüttungspolitik hierzulande nicht weg von den Dividenden hin zu den Aktienrückkäufen verschoben. In der untersuchten Periode wurden CHF 123 Mia. an Aktienrückkäufen angekündigt und CHF 408 Mia. an Divi-denden ausgeschüttet. Die empirische Analyse hat ergeben, dass der Markt die Auswirkungen von Aktienrückkäufen unterschätzt. Während der Markt kurzfristig mit +2.1% positiv reagiert, ergibt sich für Unternehmen, welche Aktien zurückkaufen, langfristig eine Überrendite von +9.44% über zwei Jahre.

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Falling corporate tax rates and increasing tax competition are changing tax legislations at the global level. The patent box is a more recent tool which has the aim to stimulate the degree of innovation of companies. It has also been heavily debated for their role in tax competition. This paper shows how the Swiss corporate tax reform of 2019 will likely affect multinational enterprises. In particular, it analyses the effects of patent box regimes in European countries towards company’s innovation activity. The results show that pa-tent box regimes have no influence on the degree of innovation. However, the latest de-velopments, such as the Nexus approach, could be a turning point.

Krisensituationen stellen erhöhte Anforderungen an die finanzielle Unternehmensführung. Die vorliegende Arbeit untersucht in diesem Zusammenhang wie sich Schweizer KMU in finanzieller Hinsicht auf eine Krise vorbereiten, beziehungsweise mit einer möglichen Krise umgehen. Anhand einer Umfrage mit 647 Schweizer KMU konnte festgestellt werden, dass die Ausgestaltung der finanziellen Führung stark von der Unternehmensgrösse abhängt. Insbesondere in den Bereichen der Planung und der Vorbereitung auf eine mögliche Unternehmenskrise gibt es bei den meisten der befragten Unternehmen noch deutlichen Handlungsbedarf. Eine detaillierte Sicht auf die zukünftigen Entwicklungen, kombiniert mit raschem Handeln, erhöhen die Chancen ein Unternehmen erfolgreich aus einer Krise zu führen.

Leveraged and inverse ETFs are a recent and successful nancial innovation that constantly spark debates. The purpose of this thesis is to present the dynamics and mechanics behind these complex products. A comprehensive analysis is carried out to assess the behavior of their returns. The results suggest that the main driver for tracking deviations is the volatility decay, which increases with longer holding periods, higher leverage and particularly with a larger realized volatility. Additionally, the ndings indicate that leveraged ETFs deliver their marketed multiple very precisely for one trading day.

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Geschäftsberichte sind Informationsquellen, aber auch Werbemittel – die Bandbreite ist riesig. Wir zeigen die besten Reports der Schweizer Firmen.

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The majority of SRI assets are invested using the exclusionary approach, but little is known on the impact this strategy has on measures of nancial per- formance and ownership structure. The ndings suggest that any dierences in these measures linked to shareholder exit are not statistically signicant and thus not explainable by exclusion, which in turn may reopen the debate on shareholder exit vs corporate engagement. Some reservations about the results remain, mainly due to restricted data availability, the lack of a stan- dardized ESG measuring and implementation as well as modeling limitations of the exclusionary approach.

A major obstacle for research in international asset pricing and corporate finance has been a lack of reliable and publicly available data on international common risk factors and portfolios. To address this gap, we provide a step-by-step description of how appropriately screened data from Thomson Reuters Datastream and Thomson Reuters Worldscope can be used to construct high-quality systematic risk factors. We provide common risk factors for 23 countries across the globe. To demonstrate the use of this dataset, we present evidence of an "extreme" size premium in a large number of countries. These premia, however, are often not realizable or at least significantly eroded due to transaction costs.

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