This review surveys the literature on the corporate governance of banks. Traditional corporate governance mechanisms …, such as concentrated ownership and takeover threats, in principle, also apply to banks. However, banks have special traits … has had limited effectiveness in protecting the interests of banks’ stakeholders, because of, for instance, unproductive …

"This paper conducts the first empirical assessment of theories concerning relationships among risk taking by banks …, their ownership structures, and national bank regulations. We focus on conflicts between bank managers and owners over risk …, and show that bank risk taking varies positively with the comparative power of shareholders within the corporate …