Oil and gold are considered to be the most two strategic commodities. Crude oil is the world’s most frequently transacted commodity while gold has a leading position among the main precious metals. This thesis examines empirically the relationship between gold prices, oil prices and US dollar index. Monthly data for gold prices, oil prices, US dollar index and other controlled variables over a period of 20 years were selected from Bloomberg platform. This thesis uses a unit root test and the Johansen test to check for the existence of cointegration between each pair of selected variables. Further ...

Succession planning is one of the most critical functions of an organization. This is the process that identifies and assesses the appropriate candidates to handle future responsibilities and to fill key business leadership positions. In family business, the succession process is defined as the transfer of managerial control from one family member to another. My thesis sought to fill a gap in the family business succession planning literature by seeking to gain an understanding of the key factors that develop it successfully. Is your family business a family-first business or a business-first ...

Purpose - This paper has two purposes; attempting to identify a CSR decision making model and exploring the perception of Lebanese business leaders on Green Economy, CSR and their inter-relationships. Design/methodology/approach - Qualitative and Deductive in nature, this paper uses 14 semi-structured and the thematic analysis framework to describe the perception of Lebanese business leaders in the exploratory study, and to test the developed proposition of the CSR decision making model in the conceptual research. Findings - The findings provide evidence to confirm the CSR decision ...

Purpose: The thesis will try the measure the efficiency of Lebanese banks, to rank and rate them using multiple approaches and taking into considerations the effect of bank size. The main objective is to compare the efficiency score to the actual ranking to see if there is any discrepancy and to see if the performance of large banks is better than that of unlisted banks. Design/ methodology/ approach: only top ten Lebanese banks are included in this thesis due to scarcity of information. Data for the study cover the period from 2008 to 2012. For the analysis and ranking of banks ‘efficiency, ...

Purpose – the purpose of this research is to examine the effect of ownership structure on the profitability and performance of U.S. banks. It resides in inspecting the power of insiders as well as institutional shareholders and large block-holders on bank’s performance and valuation of US commercial banks during the financial crisis of 2007-2009. Finally, it studies the relation between different factors such as bank size, market value and price earnings ratio and the ROA, ROE, and MTBV of U.S. banks. Research question – this paper aims to study the impact that ownership structure has on the ...

Purpose: This research identifies the determinants of the investment risk tolerance of the Lebanese institutional investors and investigates whether the behavioral conduct and the investment personal risk tolerance of the Lebanese institutional investors vary with respect to their demographic characteristics and profiles and other chosen variables. This paper also tries to identify the characteristics that make an investor rational in the decision –making. Design/ methodology/ approach: Deductive in nature, this research uses questionnaires collected from 129 Lebanese institutional investors ...

Purpose: The main goal of this thesis is to investigate whether the French market is weak and semi-strong from efficient. The weak form efficiency is tested by examining the existence of January effect in the CAC 40 index for ten years. The semi-strong form is also tested by examining the reaction of the CAC 40 index. To one terrorist attack, mainly “Charlie Hebdo” terrorist attack. Design/methodology/approach: A quantitative research design has been employed using two different methodologies. The first one is an ARCH model and its extensions in order to test the January effect, and the second ...

Purpose - the thesis will be studying and analyzing the financial and stock market in the presence of Islamic finance in Asia as a first step and in the Saudi Arabian market as a second step, before overlooking the status of the Lebanese Islamic banks. Design/methodology/approach: after defining Islamic finance and explaining its laws and regulations and the instruments used, Islamic finance will be compared to conventional finance. The results will be based on data collected from both: - Islamic and non-Islamic financial markets (Asian countries) during, before and after the financial ...

Purpose: This study investigates whether managers withdraw from a M&A deal once they observe a negative cumulative abnormal return. Moreover, it assesses whether their decision changes with respect to factors such as the listing status of the firm, its macro industry, and target size. Design/methodology/approach: Using a sample of 767 M&A US deals over the period 2005-2014 and applying an Event Study methodology, Cumulative Abnormal Returns (CAR) are calculated and introduced in a Logit model to assess the above mentioned matter. Findings: Results show that managers do listen to the market ...

Purpose - The purpose of this study was to investigate empirically whether financial development including Islamic loans leads to economic growth Design/methodology/approach - This study covered 13 countries form the MENA region during the period of 2001-2015. Multiple Fixed effect models were used on a balanced panel to check the impact of financial development variables on the GDP per capita. Findings - Conventional loans and Islamic loans have significant positive relationship with economic growth. While bank asset concentration, stock market total traded value, stock market capitalization ...