Welcome to the second edition of the Entrepreneurial Buyout Monitor – a snapshot of the trends and challenges involved in management buyouts and buy-ins of SMEs in Belgium from a practitioner’s perspective. We captured the opinions of 169 buyout experts in Belgium – including bankers, private equity investors, mezzanine players, family offices, lawyers, brokers and M&A advisers. Overall, the results indicate the investment climate has considerably improved – as expected from last year’s edition. The outlook for 2015 remains positive. The key insights from the survey are: 1) DEAL FLOW IS INCREASING – however, with higher levels of competition and more favourable lending conditions, we’ve also seen higher multiples – especially for medium sized and larger deals. It’s tougher to achieve attractive returns, so the deal origination process is critical. 2) MORE FAVOURABLE DEBT MARKETS – overall debt multiples increased and the cost of lending significantly dropped. This was true for medium sized and larger deals. However, lending conditions continue to be challenging for smaller deals – so they may need more creative deal structures. 3) ALTERNATIVE INVESTORS BECOME MORE PROMINENT – both family offices and mezzanine investors become more active in smaller MBO/MBI transactions. 4) PRIVATE EQUITY INVESTORS NEED A CLEAR STRATEGY – they need a more focussed approach to finding opportunities for growth while cutting costs. And so they must gain a deeper understanding – and further insights into the sectors they’re targeting.

This research explores both the impact of company performance and economic situation on the degree of future orientation in company reporting and the textual emphasis within forward-looking statements (company-external vs. company-internal prospective information). The examination is built on annual reports of all German HDAX companies during the period from 2003 to 2012. The results of the regression analysis reveal that high profitability and an improvement in the economy lead to an increased future orientation in company reporting. Hence, companies in an advantageous position send signals of long-lasting positive developments to capital markets. Results concerning the textual emphasis of the companies' forward-looking reporting demonstrate that the degree of forward-looking external statements increases due to company's profitability and to a downturn in the economy. In contrast, the degree of forward-looking internal statements increases due to an improvement in the economic situation. Furthermore, the economic situation positively directs the relation between performance and prospective internal reporting. Thus, forward-looking reporting focuses on the company's environment more strongly only if the economic situation is in decline (problem-oriented attention control) or if the current advantageous position of the company is preserved by the consideration of potential opportunities and risks arising from the company's environment.

CEOs play a central role for the strategic outcomes of their firms. Although research has provided many insights about the factors determining CEOs' openness toward strategic changes, the consequences of these attitudes have not been sufficiently investigated. To assess the consequences of willingness for change at the CEO level, we used the concepts of Commitment to the Status Quo (CSQ) (i.e., the belief in the enduring correctness of current strategies) and evaluate its effects for strategic persistence under the moderating role of managerial discretion. Our sample is based on 178 publicly traded firms in Germany over 10 years. Our results show that CSQ at the CEO level is crucial for strategic development only in situations of sufficiently high managerial discretion. Namely, a significant impact of the CEO's mental attitude is observable only in scenarios with high product differentiability, high market growth, bad past performance, or small companies.

Entrepreneurship has become a term that is increasingly widespread around the world. According to key players in society, including policymakers, academics, entrepreneurs themselves, and the population at large, entrepreneurship tends to be ssociatead with economic development and social well-being. Since its beginning, one of GEM`s core principles has been to explore and assess the role of entrepreneurship in national economic growth.