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...

The financial crisis that started in 2007 exposed a number of flaws in the financial system. Many of these flaws were associated with financial instruments that were issued by the shadow banking system, especially securitized assets. The volume and complexity of securitized assets grew rapidly...