This paper explores the relationship between firm performance, measured by Tobin's Q and very powerful controlling shareholders in a sample of Belgian listed firms. The paper shows that overall the largest shareholders have a negative effect on firm performance. Nevertheless, in family firms the...

We study the relationship between liquid asset holding and the pattern of share ownership and control structures within the firm. We explore these issues using a data set of Belgian firms that is particularly well suited to studying the institutions of control oriented finance. The data include...

In this paper we study the ways in which the firm's choice of liquid assets is affected by the pattern of share ownership and by the control structures within the firm. We distinguish between three separate ways in which these relationships can affect liquid- ity. First, ownership concentration...

This paper analyzes the structure of national corporate board networks of all listed firms in a very large cross-section of countries. Controlling for degree distribution, the hypothesis of randomly generated bipartite board director networks is very strongly rejected using a rigorous simulation...

This paper considers the effect on performance of very large controlling shareholders, who are mostly organized in voting blocks and business groups, in a sample of Belgian listed firms from 1991 to 2006. We use a non-parametric panel data analysis, which is a new technique that does not impose...