bio
Previously a Research Assistant and PhD student at Germany’s University of Mannheim, Dr Marcel Olbert’s broad range of experience includes investment banking within the M&A advisory group of JP Morgan London, strategy consulting with Roland Berger and international tax and private equity with PwC and Flick Gocke Schaumburg. His research interests focus on the real effects of corporate taxation and disclosure regulation – examining how multinational businesses respond to incentives that stem from their regulatory and macroeconomic environment. His work has been accepted for publication in The Accounting Review and the Journal of Accounting and Economics.
Marcel teaches in the LBS MBA programme and has been named in the businessbecause’s list of MBA professors to watch in 2022.
Publications
The Global Network of Oligarch Companies
Abstract
We study how Russian oligarch-affiliated companies operate globally and respond to sanctions. We construct a dataset tracking 70 companies, 1,800 international subsidiaries, and their institutional investors between 2009 and 2023. These companies maintain extensive networks, especially in tax havens. Difference-in-differences estimates show that the 2014 and 2022 sanctions had limited impact on the companies’ global footprint or access to institutional minority investors. Instead, oligarch companies use more tax haven entities, in particular in jurisdictions offering secrecy, and withdraw from jurisdictions with beneficial ownership disclosure regulation. Our findings highlight how organizational complexity and regulatory arbitrage undermine sanctions, suggesting that globally coordinated transparency regulation is critical for enforcement.
Corporate Tax Policy in Developed Countries and Economic Activity in Africa
Abstract
This paper studies whether tax policies in developed nations affect developing economies through cross-border investments by multinational firms. We study firm investment responses to a major U.K. tax reform that drastically reduced the income tax burden for U.K.-based firms. Our identification strategy compares the investment outcomes of U.K. multinational firms in Africa to those of other multinationals with similar ties to Africa but not subject to the large U.K. tax changes that started in 2009. Difference-in-differences estimates show that U.K. multinational firms increased their subsidiary presence in sub-Saharan Africa by 17-26 percent following the U.K. reform. Exploiting location-specific nighttime luminosity data as well as local data from the African Demographic and Health Surveys, we also document increased economic activity and higher employment rates of African citizens within close proximity of local U.K.-owned subsidiaries. These effects are confirmed using novel data on local wealth. Our findings imply that, beyond the goal of motivating home country investment, developed countries’ corporate tax policies impact developing nations.
