Many companies in Germany must provide information beyond financial figures in their annual reports. For some years now, legislators have increasingly required information on non-financial aspects, such as the shares of women in leadership positions. Using a quantitative text analysis of annual...

We investigate whether outside board memberships of CEOs signal expertise or entrenchment. The analysis is based on panel data of the largest German companies covering the period from 1996 to 2008. Supporting the entrenchment hypothesis, our analysis reveals that firms having a CEO with one or...

This paper investigates and compares the characteristics of independent directors and supervisory board members in Chinese listed firms. The occupational backgrounds of independent directors and supervisory board members in listed firms are very different. Besides, different firms have different...