The chapter continues and advances our earlier research on ‘Board Models in Europe’.** We explore ‘The Structure of the Board of Directors’ with a view to the basic governance structure as provided by a board model vis-à-vis techniques of structuring the decision-making body, which can...

An intense academic debate has arisen recently concerning the crucial bedrock that underpins a corporate governance regime where widely-held public companies dominate. In the discourse, little has been said about the contribution of merger activity. The paper seeks to address this gap by...

As articulated by Adam Smith, one of the central issues facing companies is that managers will not run the business in the interests of its owners and will misuse resources. This ultimately has a detrimental consequence for the wealth of the nation. This survey reviews the nature and evolution...

We examine the impact of acquisitions by UK acquirers on executive pay. The overall sample shows a significant transitory pay increase. Pay changes are not affected by target nationality or organizational form, although initial cross-border acquisitions result in higher pay. Pay increases are...

The paper examines the relationship between managerial share ownership and firm performance for British stock-exchange listed firms. We seek to establish a link between the predictions of agency theory and the corporate control environment using key governance and disclosure thresholds as...

In recent years there have been two parallel discussions taking place in the US and in the UK about the role which institutional shareholders should play in governing the corporation. In the US this discussion is around the idea of shareholder empowerment, in the UK it is around shareholder...

The Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2008 has demonstrated the fragility of prevailing corporate governance ideas and the weakness of legal means of minimizing risk and highlighting dangers in major banking corporations. Gatekeeper failure has undoubtedly been a significant contributor to this...

Some pressure groups propagate that agency costs in companies could be reduced if shareholders would have access to board minutes as the shareholders would have first hand information regarding the affairs of the reporting entity rather than analysing the company through annual reports which...

Recent corporate governance initiatives encourage a culture of long-term value creation and growth but cannot work as intended by policymakers. The current discussion about corporate governance ignores the transition from a centralized to a decentralized, unmediated, and interconnected world and...

We examine whether stricter non-compliance sanctions on corporate governance regulations influence the investment decisions of foreign portfolio investors in emerging markets. To answer this question we use a natural experiment provided by a corporate governance regulatory reform introduced in...