The objective of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of the main studies that have investigated the connections between managerial ownership, board aracteristics and firm’s performance. It discusses the methodological approaches used in researching the ownership’s structure –...

One of the most controversial issues in corporate governance is whether the CEO of a corporation should also serve as chairman of the board. In theory, an independent board chair improves the ability of the board to oversee management. However, an independent chairman is not unambiguously...

In three self-contained essays, this dissertation deals with the impact of board structure on firm performance and with determinants of executive compensation, director compensation, and payout policy. Each of the three chapters is based on panel data sets of German firms. Distinguishing...

This paper shows that open market block trading can provide a link between private benefits of control enjoyed by large shareholders and the ?voting premium?, i.e. the price difference between voting and non-voting shares. We first demonstrate in a microstructure model with informed traders and...

In this paper, we analyse whether bank owners or bank managers were the driving force behind the risks incurred in the wake of the financial crisis of 2007/2008. We show that owner controlled banks had higher profits in the years before the crisis, and incurred larger losses and were more likely...

We empirically study the use of value-based management systems in listed German firms and examine implications for firms' stock market performance. Using a novel, hand-collected data set covering 1,083 firm years from 2002 to 2008, we find that value-based management systems become increasingly...

This paper examines the impact of SOX on the total cost and the component cost of going public. First, we document a statistically significant increase in non-underwriting expenses of 0.8 percentage points after the introduction of SOX, which is mostly due to an increase in accounting and legal...

Building on a unique panel data set of German Prime Standard companies for the period 2005-2008, this paper investigates the influencing factors of both director compensation levels and structure, i.e. the probability of performance-based compensation. Drawing on agency theory arguments and...