In this Article we submit that the compensation structures at banks before the financial crisis were not necessarily flawed and that recent reforms in this area largely reflect already existing best practices. In Part I we review recent empirical studies on corporate governance and executive pay...

Key points:• This article considers how the recent market turmoil affected national banking systems, thereby prompting state measures;• It describes the remuneration problems shown by the financial crisis: rewards for failure; short-term behaviour; inappropriate design of performance...

Some voices are defending the need for further consolidation as a way of fixing the problems remaining in the European banking system. While further consolidation has indeed some advantages and benefits, it also implies some drawbacks and costs. This paper discusses the implications of...

After a crisis, broad and sweeping reforms are enacted to restore trust. Following the 2007-2008 Great Financial Crisis, the European Union has engaged in an ambitious overhaul of banking regulation. One of its centerpieces, the 2013 Fourth Capital Requirements Directive (CRD IV), tackles,...

We examine the political dynamics which led to the codification of the Principles and Standards for sound compensation practices at financial institutions at international (G 20) level and to their subsequent implementation on both sides of the Atlantic. We show that the regulation of bankers'...

On 27 February 2013, the European Union (EU) reached a provisional deal to limit the amount of bankers' bonuses to the amount of fixed remuneration (i.e., a one-to-one ratio); the cap could be increased to 2:1 with the backing of a supermajority of shareholders. I demonstrate that the pending EU...

Since 2009, the European Commission requires firms to incorporate an array of new elements into CEO compensation contracts, such as bonus caps, claw back provisions, bonus deferral, performance-vesting, and minimum shareholding guidelines. This paper examines whether CEO contract design in line...

For several years, European financial markets have been the place of important mutations. These mutations have hit both stock markets themselves as well as the infrastructures including all necessary services for the transactions on financial securities. Among the market services to which the...

Minority shareholdings have been on the regulatory agenda of competition authorities for some time. Recent empirical studies, however, draw attention to a new, thought provoking theory of harm: common ownership by institutional investors holding small, parallel equity positions in several...