Contributions in Merlin

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Diplomas have a high importance in society since they serve as official proofs for the education and skills of the recipients. Therefore, it is not surprising that forgeries of such documents have become commonplace. Employers and headhunters are aware of this problem, which is why it is often required that diplomas have to be verified by the issuer. This exchange of information is currently manual and, therefore, time-consuming. However, today's technology opens up opportunities to overcome these obstacles. In particular, blockchain has revolutionized the way in which people and enterprises interact with each other. The information stored in the blockchain is managed in a distributed manner that is transparent for everyone, and at the same time tamper-proof. Based on this, a holistic solution that includes issuance, storage and verification of diplomas can be realized. This master thesis presents the design and implementation of an end-to-end blockchain based system for managing diplomas called UZHBC (University of ZuricH BlockChain), using the University of Zurich as the issuing instance. By involving stakeholders, it is shown which requirements such a system must fullfill and how, in the end, an executable prototype with the necessary functionalities is created.

This paper analyses long-term portfolio management decisions in the presence of regime switches in asset returns with stochastic trading costs. The underlying assets are represented by a market portfolio and factor portfolios tracking size, value, protability, and investment eects. First, consistent with the literature, this paper also nds strong evidence of time-variations in the joint distribution of returns with respect to the underlying factor portfolios. Two separate regimes, characterized mainly by volatility in asset returns, are required to capture the dynamics. Second, by adopting a dynamic optimal asset allocation strategy the hedging properties of factor portfolios are found to vary signi cantly across regimes. Nevertheless, out-of-sample forecasting experiments show the economic importance of market timing in asset allocation decisions.

This thesis investigates the effects of profitability, capitalization and regulations on acquisition premi-ums for a sample of European banking mergers and acquisitions between 1997 and 2007. Up until the financial crisis in 2008, the banking sector experienced a stellar growth fueled by deregulation, financial innovations and favorable market conditions. Deregulation in the European Union lowered the barriers of expansion for banks, allowing them to expand to new countries, gain in size and serve a larger pool of customers. It also increased competitive pressure, forcing banks to rationalize their capital either through releasing new products or through mergers and acquisitions. Consequently, mergers & acquisi-tions gained in popularity in the 1990s, which reinforced the consolidation trend of European banks, especially in the largest European countries. One way to investigate banks’ motivations is to analyze the different factors influencing the pay-ment of the premium. The factors influencing the premiums are not solely of financial nature, but can also be of regulatory nature, such as the effect of a low level of regulatory strength of a country. The main critique echoed after the crisis towards banks, were that they took excessive risks and did not hold enough capital, which ultimately forced their respective states to bail them out. These developments raised issues about bank supervision, bail-out funding and deposit insurance schemes that are of central importance to a functioning financial sector. These considerations motivate my focus on profitability, capitalization and regulatory factors for this thesis. The results of my empirical analysis echo the findings of the literature, with profitable and lower capi-talized banks fetching higher premiums. Paying a premium for an unprofitable bank could effectively penalize the bank’s stock and decrease shareholder value in the mid-term, due to the signal that such an action sends to the market. Moreover, gathering support to pay a premium for a profitable bank should - for bank managers - come easier than for an unprofitable one. Regarding capitalization, it appears that high capital ratios are often viewed as an inefficient use of capital in banking and are interpreted as a sign of high risk aversion, which would not encourage the payment of a premium. The obtained result on capitalization illustrate the role of capital levels in banking, which are comparatively lower than in other industries. Regarding the regulatory variables, my results do not show evidence that these variables have an impact on the premiums. In that sense, the evidence in favor of strict regulation having a negative effect on premiums is ambivalent.

Diversität an der Spitze von Grossunternehmen ist heute „state of the art“ und wird aus ökonomischen, regulatorischen und gesellschaftlichen Gründen weiter an Bedeutung gewinnen. Der Verwaltungsrat steht als oberstes Firmenorgan besonders im Fokus und ist Gegenstand vieler Diskussionen. Elementar ist die Frage, ob und inwiefern Diversität im Verwaltungsrat Auswirkungen auf die wirtschaftliche Leistung eines Unternehmens hat. Mit einer empirischen Analyse über den Zeitraum von 2007 bis 2016 untersucht die vorliegende Forschungsarbeit diesen Zusammenhang für die Schweizer Firmen-landschaft, beleuchtet potenzielle Wirkungskanäle und erweitert die reine Finanzsicht um Investoren-perspektiven. Verschiedene Diversitätsdimensionen werden vereint, qualitativ und quantitativ fundiert und erlauben ein umfassendes Gesamtbild.

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Sustainable investing has experienced enormous growth in recent years and can by no means be dismissed as a niche phenomenon. Even though its origins date back quite some time, the present form is still relatively young and is still undergoing change. While sustainable investment is generally known for its application in public markets, this master thesis is devoted to the question of what contribution private markets can make in this area. Existing academic literature is mainly concerned with the efficiency dimension of sustainable investment, measured in terms of returns, whereas this thesis addresses the aspect of effectiveness. The aim is to clarify the hypothesis whether certain characteristics make private markets better suited to the needs of sustainable investment than public markets. In addition, a practical example shows how an established private market asset manager can launch a fund that is dedicated to sustainable investments. First, the evolution of sustainable investment is examined more closely. This shows that investors who consider sustainability aspects, generally pursue the same goals as other investors, but actively include this aspect when making investment decisions. An analysis of current data indicates that the overall growth of such sustainable strat-egies continues steadily, although in relative terms this is most pronounced in strate-gies that may be directly related to private markets. Consequently, the focus is on the development and characteristics of private markets, which have created the favorable conditions for the consistent pursuit of sustainable investment strategies on a large scale. Given the importance of institutional capital, it is essential that large amounts of capital can be absorbed and deployed in a goal-oriented manner, if sustainable strategies are to be pursued actively. In this respect, it becomes apparent that it is due in particular to the institutionalization which has shaped private markets in recent years and continues to do so, that institutional investors are increasingly able to make consistent use of alternative asset managers for the implementation of sustainable investment strategies. In addition, the effects of the shrinking universe of public stocks, shortcomings of ESG screening in public markets, the dilemma of short-termism, and the effect of governance structures on the suitability for sustainable investments are examined. It should be noted that many phenomena lead to the con-clusion that public markets alone cannot be optimal for implementing sustainable investment strategies for institutional investors in a meaningful way in the long run. Rather, private markets in their current form offer previously untapped opportunities and significantly expand the investment universe in terms of sustainable investments. In this respect, it is essential that sustainability oriented investors maintain their good ambitions in public markets, but at the same time recognize private markets as an opportunity to implement their strategy consistently and effectively. Based on these findings, a real-life case study illustrates how an established manager of private market investments, which has undergone the aforementioned institution-alization, can design and launch a private markets fund focused on sustainable in-vestments. This involves assessing customer demand, systematically integrating sus-tainability aspects into the unique private markets investment process and clarifying the positioning and choice of the fund model before finally launching such a product.

This master thesis analyses the shareholder wealth effect of mergers and acquisitions in the insurance industry between 1990 and 2017 on a global scale. An event study sample of 196 deals is considered, in which both the acquiring and target company are publicly listed. The data reveals that the market values various types of insurance deals differently. Post-crisis and cross-border deals show slightly higher equity market returns than pre-crisis and domestic deals. Furthermore, consolidation, vertical integration and bancassurance deals are significantly higher valued than diversification deals. On the contrary, deals in which the target company is financially stressed show significant negative returns. The analysis shows that the returns of acquiring and target companies are also influenced by the relative size of target to acquiring company and the acquirer`s leverage ratio.