We analyze the role of bankers on the boards of German non-financial companies for the period from 1994 to 2005. We find that banks that are represented on a firm's board promote their own business as lenders and as M&A advisors. They also seem to act as financial experts who help firms to...

We analyze how shareholders screen management proposals at annual general meetings. First, we use a simple model of strategic voting to develop a theoretical benchmark of effective information aggregation through voting. Then, we derive testable implications and provide structural estimates of...