英语论文网

ave been directed toward the U.S.exchanges,while U.S.companies havereduced their cross-listings in Europe.Correspondingly,the ability of Euro-pean exchanges to attract listings from the rest of the world has declined,while the reverse has happened to U.S.exchanges.Interestingly,the Euro-pean markets with the highest trading costs,lowest accounting standards,and worst shareholder protection have also fared worst in attracting or re-taining foreign listings,and companies from those countries have been com-paratively eager in seeking foreign listings.We then turn to microeconomic data to gain a better understanding of
these shifts in the geography of cross-listings,by linking companies’deci-
sions to list abroad to their ex ante characteristics~e.g.,size or foreign sales!
and their ex post behavior~e.g.,their growth rate after listing abroad!.We
investigate these relationships by using company-level data for nonfinancial
European companies during the period 1986 to 1998.This data has been
drawn from the Global Vantage and Worldscope databases.
We find that the European companies that list on other European ex-
changes and those that list in the United States have only a few common
features:They are larger and more likely to be recently privatized than firms
that do not cross-list.Instead,the differences between the two groups are
numerous and striking.European companies that cross-list in the United
States pursue a strategy of rapid,equity-funded expansion.They rely heav-
ily on export markets both before and after the listing and tend to belong to
high-tech industries.Companies that cross-list elsewhere in Europe,in-
stead,have a higher return on assets before cross-listing,do not grow more
than the control group,and increase their leverage after the cross-listing.
Also,they do not rely on foreign sales to the same extent as firms cross-
listing in the United States,and generally do not belong to high-tech sectors.
Thus,cross-listing in the United States appears to be driven by the need to
fund growth and foreign sales expansion,generally in high-tech sectors.These
motives are less common for European companies that cross-list on other
European exchanges.Therefore,the changing geography of cross-listings across
the Atlantic is associated with a difference in the type of companies that cross-
list in the two continents.U.S.exchanges appear to be especially suited to the
needs of high-growth,export-oriented or high-tech European companies.
The plan of the paper is as follows.In Section I,we outline the main
reasons why companies may wish to list abroad and draw testable predic-
tions from each hypothesis.In Section II,we analyze the overall pattern of
cross-listings,studying the geographical origin and destination of firms that
went public on the world’s major equity exchanges in the period 1986 to
2652 The Journal of Finance1997.In Section III,we perform a first exploration of company-level data
using descriptive statistics centered on the year of cross-listing.Section IV
presents an econometric analysis of the variables that affect the choice to
list abroad for the first time,as well as the choice between listing in the
United States or in Europe.In Section V,we try to gauge if listing abroad
affects the subsequent performance of companies relative to our control sam-
ple and how this differential performance hinges on cross-listing in