Betas Used by Companies and Professors in Europe: A Survey

We report 1,466 answers from European managers and professors. 1,143 respondents use required return and 824 use betas to calculate it. 44.4% of the managers and 8% of the professors do not use beta to justify the required return. Only 2% of the professors and 15% of the managers justify the beta using exclusively personal judgement (named qualitative, common sense, intuitive, and logical magnitude betas by different persons).