consider the tradeoff between the benefits of direct bank monitoring to the firm and the costs of active bank involvement in …. Consistent with high potential costs of active bank involvement, we find that bankers tend to be represented on the boards of … implications for the current bank regulatory reform debate, such as whether to permit banks to own equity in non-financial firms …

outside directors than non- financial firms, and bank officer-directors tend to have more external board directorships than …- information cost firms are also more likely to borrow from their connected bank, and when they do so the terms of the loan appear …

Though overall bank performance from July 2007 to December 2008 was the worst since at least the Great Depression … performance of banks during the credit crisis. More specifically, we investigate whether bank performance is related to bank …-level governance, country-level governance, country-level regulation, and bank balance sheet and profitability characteristics before …

shocks. We show that firms whose debt" had a higher fraction of bank loans in 1989 performed worse from 1990 to 1993. This … affect performance during this period of time. We find that firms that were more" bank-dependent also invested less during … this period than other firms. This evidence points to an" adverse effect of bank-centered corporate governance, namely that …

representatives on corporate boards. If a banking relationship is a substitute for the stock market, then interaction with a bank … monopolistic control over access to external capital markets, then bank interests may conflict with those of other equityholders … structure of the firms' equity. We test for conflicts-of-interest in bank behavior and ask whether the relationship between …

(e.g. bank profits) and the incentive to maximize firm value. Requiring financial expertise on boards, as mandated by …