Alexander Zureck

This study examines how ESG transparency affects the firm value of European publicly listed companies, highlighting the moderating role of digitalization. Using panel data from STOXX Europe 600 firms (2020-2023; 1,763 firm-year observations), we employ the Bloomberg ESG Disclosure Score, Tobin's Q and a validated text-mining-based digitalization index based on 524 technologyrelated terms across four technology clusters. Panel regressions show that ESG transparency alone does not significantly affect firm value. Overall digitalization, especially AI and automation, appear to act as conditional moderators that shape the relationship between ESG transparency and firm value. Interaction-and robustness analyses partially confirm the relevance of overall digitalization and AI/automation effects. The findings suggest that strategic integration of ESG and digital initiatives, particularly AI and automation, can potentially enhance firm value, though observed effects remain econometrically limited. Other digital technologies, while conceptually supportive by providing data and capacity, exhibit no significant direct effects on firm value. The analysis contributes to the literature by addressing methodological nuances, including interaction effect interpretation, measurement issues and endogeneity concerns and discusses approaches in prior ESG/digitalization research. Additionally, practical implications for corporate strategy and regulatory compliance (e.g. CSRD) are provided. Future research could evaluate advanced machine learning and NLP approaches to better capture AI's role in ESG reporting, taking into account the perspectives regarding both the potential and current limitations of commonly used digitalization proxies highlighted in this study.

This article examines whether corporate governance mechanisms improve the performance of small-cap listed firms and considers the implications for European governance debates. Using Hong Kong as a case, it draws on a mixed-methods study of firms listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange between 2018 and 2023. The quantitative analysis investigates board independence, chair/CEO duality, and audit committee meeting frequency in relation to return on assets and return on equity across the full period and pre-COVID, COVID, and post-COVID sub-periods. Interviews with directors and governance professionals explain how these mechanisms operate under concentrated ownership, family influence, limited resources, and compliance pressure. The findings indicate that board independence has limited financial impact when independent directors lack authority, expertise, or influence. Chair/CEO duality emerges as the clearest governance risk during crises, when concentrated power weakens oversight. Audit committee activity is context-dependent: meeting frequency appears most relevant in crisis periods, whereas oversight quality matters more under stable conditions. From a European perspective, the article compares the German Corporate Governance Code, the UK Corporate Governance Code 2024, and the EU framework. Germany relies on a two-tier board structure separating management and supervision, while the United Kingdom combines a unitary board with chair/CEO separation and independent non-executive directors. EU law does not prescribe a single board model but harmonizes disclosure, shareholder engagement, and audit oversight. The article therefore argues that small-cap governance reform should reflect institutional context and listing venue, shifting attention from the formal presence of governance mechanisms to their substantive capacity and effectiveness.

This study investigates the impact of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ratings on the systematic and unsystematic risk of European companies from 2017 to 2022. Using data from the STOXX Europe 600 Index, we employ panel regression and multiple linear regression analyses to examine two ESG rating methodologies: the Bloomberg Disclosure Score, which serves as a proxy for ESG transparency, and the Morningstar Sustainalytics Score, which represents ESG performance. To ensure robustness, control variables—including market capitalization, EBIT margin, debt-to-equity ratio, payout ratio, sector classification, and the risk-free interest rate—are included in the analyses. The main findings show that from 2017 to 2021, ESG transparency has a significant positive impact on systematic risk. In 2022, however, this relationship becomes negative, indicating a shift in the way transparency affects risk. Throughout the study period, no significant effect of ESG transparency on unsystematic risk is observed. Regarding ESG performance, the results show that in ESG-sensitive sectors, higher ESG performance significantly increases systematic risk from 2017 to 2019. From 2019 to 2022, better ESG performance is associated with a significant reduction in systematic risk. In addition, a significant positive impact on unsystematic risk is found from 2019 to 2022. These findings highlight the complex and dynamic relationship between ESG ratings and company risk profiles, which is influenced by factors such as time period, industry sensitivity, and rating methodology. The study underlines the importance of context in understanding the impact of ESG factors on investment risk.

In this paper, the collective intelligence of the top traders of a leading Social Trading Platform (STP) is investigated using contemporaneously held stocks. The calculated annual return of the contemporaneously held stocks is larger than that of the MSCI Worlds over the study period and the purchase decisions are affected by the home and familiarity bias. The collective intelligence of the top traders of the STP can provide trading signals. The following article presents the procedure to determine the Collective Intelligence of Social Traders as well as the biases from Behavioural Finance.

With the growing need for digital business transformation, corporate venture capital (CVC) investors have been faced with the challenge of how to deal with this trend. Although digital business transformation and CVC are highly relevant, previous studies have investigated them separately instead of their relationships. Therefore, this research aimed to study the impact of CVC on digital business transformation to fill this research gap. Based on an exploratory research design, eleven experts from different industries were interviewed. The following results were found in this study: (1) after the CVC unit collaborated with an Open Innovation (OI) unit, the CVC activities were integrated into the decentralized OI activities, and a dedicated team in the CVC unit was responsible for OI and venture client-based OI activities, thus achieving digital OI; (2) CVC was used to pursue ambidexterity, digital exploration or exploitation; (3) CVC supported digital business transformation at the organizational, social, and technical levels, which provided an answer to the overarching research question of how CVC supported innovation processes. Theoretical implications of this study lied in enhancing the understanding between CVC and digital business transformation, thus extending the understanding of CVC organization and impact. Furthermore, this study provided practical implications and recommendations on organizing CVC and using it to achieve digital business transformation according to strategic objectives.

This work focuses on forecasting emerging technology trends in the insurance industry with the use of artificial intelligence (AI). In comparison to similar industries, the digital transformation of the insurance industry is progressing slowly. Traditional insurance organizations are struggling to gain an overview over emerging technologies to be used in their respective transformation journeys. New digital players such as Fresh, which has been successfully selling flat rate insurance offerings via WhatsApp in the German insurance market since 2021 are acting as first movers when it comes to emerging insurance technologies and are increasingly becoming a threat in the insurance market. Forecasting emerging technology trends can support traditional insurers in mitigating this threat. This work seeks to answer how artificial intelligence solutions can help insurers gain a competitive advantage and how beneficial it will be to substitute the proposed approach for conventional forecasting techniques. In this context, a topic clustering text mining algorithm based on patent and scientific journal publications is applied to detect emerging technology trends. This method identified sustainability and blockchain technology as emerging technology trends in the insurance industry. It furthermore partially outperformed industry expert opinions on the future insurance technologies. The proposed approach should be used as an additional tool to quick start the research and development process in the insurance industry instead of being substituted for forecasting methods used today.

According to a study by the German Federal Printing Office (2022), every European lives with 90 digital identities on average, and the trend is rising. The German government has launched the innovation competition “Digital Identities Showcase” to select and promote identity projects for data security and sovereignty. The funding amount is 50 million EUR to develop software, research practical use cases and implement them by 2024. Of course, this large sum presupposes acceptance for the use of such digital identities, especially against the backdrop of critical opinions from the media and society, as already outlined in a Canadian study. However, there is little academic research on blockchain technology, but almost no article on the use of digital identities based on blockchain technology. This paper conducts a quantitative study on the social acceptance of digital identities using a questionnaire-based survey with 324 German participants on the social acceptance of the use of digital identities. The result of the study is that social acceptance of the use of digital identities is significantly influenced by demographics, citizens’ experience with blockchain products, affinity with financial products and privacy concerns.