In August 2007 the United Kingdom experienced its first bank run in over 140 years. Although Northern Rock was not a particularly large bank (it was at the time ranked 7th in terms of assets) it was nevertheless a significant retail bank and a substantial mortgage lender. In fact, ten years...

We examine evidence for a systematic underperformance of Germany's state-owned banks in the current financial crisis and study if the bank losses can be traced to the quality of bank governance. For this purpose, we examine the biographical background of 593 supervisory board members in the 29...