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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the success of the 50 EURO STOXX companies as measured by the earnings before taxes (EBT) and the percentage of female members on their supervisory boards.

The paper relies on data extracted from the annual reports of the 50 EURO STOXX companies in 2015 and from financial websites.

The paper provides the existence of a weak correlation between companies’ performance as measured by EBT and the percentage of women on supervisory boards.

This study has two main limitations: first, a single key performance indicator was used to measure firms’ success; and second, the study offers insights related only to the year 2015. The analysis could be extended over a larger time span while some other variables could be considered in a more holistic approach.

The paper raises awareness that there is much to be done with regard to the presence of women on boards, and readers, investors and business owners gain an insight on the business environment and women active on European corporate boards.

By concentrating on the companies of the EURO STOXX 50 Index, the study offers a good image of the European business environment.

Many large companies in Europe include mainly men in supervisory boards and the women quota is often lower than 20%. In Germany an optional women quota of 30% in supervisory boards was proposed for capital-market-oriented companies in 2016. Some assume that without a gender quota the earnings of enterprises would shrink as male and female members in supervisory teams do not work in such a harmonized and structured way. Others think that a women quota in supervisory boards should be requested by law and should not remain optional. In this context, conducting research and analyzing the impact of the women’s presence in supervisory boards on the success of companies appear as a necessary topic. The present chapter looks at the companies of EURO STOXX 50 in the year 2015 and their success and tries to establish whether this success can be related to the percentage of female members in supervisory positions. It replicates in this way the study of Binder, Alonso-Almeida, and Bremser (2016) which analyzed the relationship between female’s representation in the management board (executive board) and firm performance (measured by earnings before taxes – EBT) of the EURO STOXX 50 companies in 2014. It is in the same time an extension of the original study as the supervisory board is brought under scrutiny.

The purpose of this paper is to study the remuneration of management in the financial crisis. What are the key elements of management payment at the Euro Stoxx 50 companies, does management remuneration comprise long-term incentives in order to overcome principal-agent conflicts and how did the financial crisis affect management payment in terms of payment elements and size?

Based on the Euro Stoxx 50 financial reports of the fiscal year 2009 and other documents elements and size of management payment are being analysed.

Management payment has been affected by financial crisis. Among the Euro Stoxx 50 companies management remuneration is quite heterogeneous.

There is still a lack of use of appropriate metrics. There are doubts whether measures like TSR really can align manager's decisions to a sustainable, long-term orientated strategy.

The paper gives an insight view in management remuneration at the Euro Stoxx 50 companies.

The study aims to analyse annual reports of the non-financial European firms listed at the EURO STOXX 50 index over the period of 2007 and 2011.

This study intends to address two main issues: to what extent the country-level institutional forces compel (directly) firm's risk reporting (RR) behaviour and in which way these country-level institutional forces moderate the relationship between RR and firm-level characteristics.

Main findings indicate that, during this period, the European listed companies disclosed more risk information on a voluntary basis (such as operational and strategic risks) and with better informative content (more forward-looking and focused on positive news). Consistent with institutional theory, findings confirm that the country-level institutional forces explain variations on RR. Additionally, it also indicates that the relationship between RR and leveraged firms is weaker among countries with stronger institutional forces. These findings have several implications for investors and regulators in Europe basically in helping achieve efficiency in investment decisions and to stimulate further efforts to improve RR regulations.

This study makes two major contributions. First, it extends Elshandidy's et al. (2015) work by using other country-level institutional forces that capture the efficacy of corporate boards, the protection of minority shareholders' interests, country's level of democracy, law enforcement mechanisms and press freedom. Second, it uses firms that are considered as a blue-chip representation of super-sector leaders in the Eurozone (but from different institutional contexts). This research setting can be more insightful in shedding some light towards our understanding on how these leading firms can promote innovative and high quality level of RR and how country-level driving forces influence these variables.

The aims of the research are twofold: (1) exploring whether football club stocks can be considered an asset class of their own; (2) investigating whether football stocks enable well-diversified investors to achieve more efficient risk-return combinations.

Using efficient frontier optimization, a base portfolio, with standard stocks and bonds, and a corresponding enhanced portfolio, which includes football stocks in the investment opportunity set, are defined. This procedure is applied to four portfolio composition rules. Pairwise comparisons of portfolio Sharpe ratios include a test for statistical significance.

The results indicate a low correlation of football stocks and standard stocks; thus, football stocks could be considered an asset class of their own. Nevertheless, the addition of football stocks to a well-diversified portfolio does not improve its risk-return efficiency because the weak performance of football stocks eliminates their advantage of low correlation.

This study contributes to the evidence that investments in football are different from ‘ordinary’ investments and need further research, particularly into market participants and their investment motives.

Football stocks are not attractive to pure financial investors. Thus, football clubs need to know more about which side benefits are appreciated by which kind of investor and how much it costs to produce these side benefits.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to analyse the risk-return efficiency of football stocks from the perspective of a pure financial investor, i.e. an investor in football stocks who does not earn side benefits, such as strategic investors or fan investors.

This paper aims to test three parametric models in pricing and hedging higher-order moment swaps. Using vanilla option prices from the volatility surface of the Euro Stoxx 50 Index, the paper shows that the pricing accuracy of these models is very satisfactory under four different pricing error functions. The result is that taking a position in a third moment swap considerably improves the performance of the standard hedge of a variance swap based on a static position in the log-contract and a dynamic trading strategy. The position in the third moment swap is taken by running a Monte Carlo simulation.

This paper undertook empirical tests of three parametric models. The aim of the paper is twofold: assess the pricing accuracy of these models and show how the classical hedge of the variance swap in terms of a position in a log-contract and a dynamic trading strategy can be significantly enhanced by using third-order moment swaps. The pricing accuracy was measured under four different pricing error functions. A Monte Carlo simulation was run to take a position in the third moment swap.

The results of the paper are twofold: the pricing accuracy of the Heston (1993) model and that of two Levy models with stochastic time and stochastic volatility are satisfactory; taking a position in third-order moment swaps can significantly improve the performance of the standard hedge of a variance swap.

The limitation is that these empirical tests are conducted on existing three parametric models. Maybe more critical insights could have been revealed had these tests been conducted in a brand new derivatives pricing model.

This work is 100 per cent original, and it undertook empirical tests of the pricing and hedging accuracy of existing three parametric models.

Considers the implications of EMU and the introduction of the euro for European financial institutions and markets. Discusses the likely effects on interest rates, banks, stock/futures exchanges, asset allocation and the markets for bonds, equities and derivatives. Warns that financial markets and institutions must adjust to these changes in order to survive, but believes that European economies will benefit in the long run.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the relationship between emotion and European energy forward prices of oil, gas, coal and electricity during normal times and periods of extreme price movements.

Methodology/Approach – We use a biorhythm approach characterized by the seasonal affective disorder (SAD) variable to study the impact of emotion on energy markets. Normal times and periods of extreme price movements are approximated by OLS and quantile estimations, respectively.

Findings – We use European energy forward prices of oil, gas, coal, and electricity. European equity future index (Dow Jones Euro Stoxx 50) and euro/dollar US exchange rate are used as control variables for economic and financial environment. Estimating OLS and quantile regressions, we find that seasonal patterns have a significant impact during extreme volatility periods only. Further investigations reveal that the SAD effect is significant during periods of price decrease, but insignificant during price increase times. The out-of-sample predictive ability properties show that our “SAD model” outperforms significantly the pure “macroeconomic” one.

Originality/Value of chapter – This topic is novel in energy finance since I use psychological background theory to understand energy price dynamics. I illustrate the relevance of our approach by comparing the out-of-sample predictive ability of our model against macroeconomic one. My results could be considered to improve energy porfolio allocation.