Selling Company Shares to Reluctant Employees: France Télécom's Experience

Francois Degeorge (), Peter Tufano, Dirk Jenter and Alberto Moel

No 2483, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: In 1997, France Télécom, the French telecommunications firm, went through a partial privatization. The government offered current and prior France Télécom employees the opportunity to buy portfolios of shares with various combinations of discounts, required holding periods, and levels of downside protection. We adapt a neoclassical model of investment decision-making that takes into account firm-specific human capital and holding period restrictions to predict how employees might respond to the share offers. Using a new database that tracks over 200,000 eligible participants, we analyse the employees' characteristics and their decisions regarding (a) whether to participate; (b) how much to invest; and (c) what form of stock alternatives they selected. The results are broadly consistent with the neoclassical model. However, the amount of funds invested in the stock plans seems driven by a different set of forces than the decision to participate. While former employees and retirees are less likely to participate in the offering, they tend to invest more than others conditional on participating. We suspect that this phenomenon reflects a 'threshold effect', which we attempt to measure. Employees forewent benefits equal to one to two months' salary by failing to participate. Finally, we find that the characteristics of the average chosen portfolios are broadly consistent with theoretical predictions from our neoclassical model, but almost all potential participants underweighted the most valuable asset, a decision hard to reconcile with rational portfolio choice.

Keywords: Capital and ownership structure; Financing policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000-06
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP2483 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:2483

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP2483

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().