This paper explores the reasons why an increasing number of firms in continental Europe are unifying their shares into a single class, and analyzes the consequences of this restructuring. Interestingly, recent changes in corporate governance environment have created a situation when the reasons...

This paper uses clinical evidence to show how the German system of corporate control and governance is both more active and more hostile than has previously been suggested. It provides a complete breakdown of ownership and take-over defence patterns in German listed companies and finds highly...

The first striking feature is that ownership of the average UK company is diffuse: a coalition of at least eight shareholders is required to reach an absolute majority of voting rights. Even though the average firm has a dispersed ownership, the reader should bear in mind that there are about...

This paper analyses ownership and control structures of Dutch listed companies. Legislation effective since 1992 mandates all shareholders with holdings of 5 percent or more in Dutch companies to disclose their holdings. Our analysis shows that the average ownership stakes of the largest and the...

This paper analyses the turnover of board of directors members on a sample of companies listed on the Milan Stock Exchange in the period 1988-1996. Our aim is to investigate if board members change more frequently when company performance is poor, as the literature suggests, if this relationship...

This research work is aimed at determining the effectiveness of the Audit Committee (AC), analyzing its impact on the reliability of accounting information issued by spanish listed companies. With this aim, we study whether certain features such as its voluntary or otherwise compulsory...

Mass privatization offers a particularly suitable framework to study the change in ownership concentration as the extent of change is unusual for a stable market economy. Focusing on two different mass privatization schemes in two transition economies, Poland and the Czech Republic, we find that...

We study the evolution of the control structure of 141 privatized firms from OECD countries over the period from 1996 through 2000. We find that governments do not relinquish control after "privatization." We show that the market-to-book ratios of privatized firms converge through time to those...

We investigate the role of ownership structure and investor protection in postprivatization corporate governance. We find that the government relinquishes control over time, mainly to the benefit of local institutions and foreign investors. We also show that private ownership tends to...

The question of whether the CEO should also serve as chairman of the board is one of the most hotly debated issues in the recent corporate governance discussion. While agencytheoretic arguments advocate a separation of decision and control functions, the empirical evidence focusing on U.S....