Abstract
Considering the French market for corporate control specificities, this paper examines the existence of preventive anti-takeover defenses and their efficiency in France during the 1989-1998 period. Based on a sample of 162 firms, results show that preventive defenses linked to the board and ownership structure have the most deterrent effect on ex ante takeover likelihood. Moreover, only those based on voting rights may help the manager to protect her human capital ex post. In both cases, we observe a positive influence of performance variables suggesting that the French market for corporate control is mostly driven by a rent-seeking behavior of managers.