Using new data for the universe of firms covered in Amadeus, we reconstruct the portfolios of shareholders who hold equity stakes in private and publicly-traded European firms. We find great heterogeneity in the degree of portfolio diversification across large shareholders. Exploiting this...

In their 2008 paper, Dahya, Dimitrov, and McConnell find that corporate values are lower when a higher fraction of the firm’s board of directors is associated with the dominant shareholder, especially in countries with weak legal regimes. Our study presents a simple model that is consistent...