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The German corporate governance system has long been cited as the standard example of an insider-controlled and stakeholder-oriented system. We argue that despite important reforms and substantial changes of individual elements of the German corporate governance system the main characteristics of the traditional German system as a whole are still in place. However, in our opinion the changing role of the big universal banks in the governance undermines the stability of the corporate governance system in Germany. Therefore a breakdown of the traditional system leading to a control vacuum or a fundamental change to a capital market-based system could be in the offing.
Vor dem Hintergrund allgemeiner Bedingungen der Anreizkompatibilität wird für verschiedenen Kapitalmarktmodelle untersucht, ob zwischen den Anteilseignern eines Unternehmens Einmütigkeit besteht und, wenn ja, mit welchem Unternehmensziel der finanzielle Nutzen der Anteilseigner maximiert wird. Von besonderer Bedeutung für die Anreizkompatibilität der üblichen linearen Erfolgsteilung ist die Bedingung pareto-effizienter Risikoteilung. Sind für den Erfolg des Unternehmens spezifische Störterme relevant und soll der Entscheidungsträger in relativ starkem Umfang am Erfolg beteiligt werden, ist die Risikoteilung zwischen ihm und den (anderen) Anteilseignern pareto-inferior. Anreizkompatible erfolgsorientierte Belohnungs- bzw. Prämienfunktionen für den Entscheidungsträger sind dann konvex und zustandsabhängig. Aktienoptionsprogramme können als Approximationen an solche Prämienfunktionen interpretiert werden.
This paper analyzes the impact of blockownership dispersion on firm value. Blockholdings by multiple blockholders is a widespread phenomenon in the U.S. market. It is not clear, however, whether dispersion among blockholder is preferable to having a more concentrated ownership structure. To test for the direction of the effect, we use a large dataset of U.S. firms that combines blockholder information, shareholder rights information, debt ratings, accounting information, and financial markets information. We find that a large fraction of aggregated block ownership negatively affects Tobin’s Q. The negative impact is larger if blockowners are more dispersed, suggesting that a concentrated ownership structure is to be preferred on average. Results are robust to controlling for blockholder type as well as proxies for shareholder rights. Our empirical findings are also confirmed if we study the impact of ownership dispersion on firm debt ratings rather than Tobin’s Q. JEL Classification: G3, G32
We analyze the effect of committee formation on how corporate boards perform two main functions: setting CEO pay and overseeing the financial reporting process. The use of performance-based pay schemes induces the CEO to manipulate earnings, which leads to an increased need for board oversight. If the whole board is responsible for both functions, it is inclined to provide the CEO with a compensation scheme that is relatively insensitive to performance in order to reduce the burden of subsequent monitoring. When the functions are separated through the formation of committees, the compensation committee is willing to choose a higher pay-performance sensitivity as the increased cost of oversight is borne by the audit committee. Our model generates predictions relating the board committee structure to the pay-performance sensitivity of CEO compensation, the quality of board oversight, and the level of earnings management.
It is widely believed that the ideal board in corporations is composed almost entirely of independent (outside) directors. In contrast, this paper shows that some lack of board independence can be in the interest of shareholders. This follows because a lack of board independence serves as a substitute for commitment. Boards that are dependent on the incumbent CEO adopt a less aggressive CEO replacement rule than independent boards. While this behavior is inefficient ex post, it has positive ex ante incentive effects. The model suggests that independent boards (dependent boards) are most valuable to shareholders if the problem of providing appropriate incentives to the CEO is weak (severe).
Financial development and financial institution building are important prerequisites for economic growth. However, both the potential and the problems of institution building are still vastly underestimated by those who design and fund institution building projects. The paper first underlines the importance of financial development for economic growth, then describes the main elements of “serious” institution building: the lending technology, the methodological approaches, and the question of internal structure and corporate governance. Finally, it discusses three problems which institution building efforts have to cope with: inappropriate expectations on the part of donor and partner institutions regarding the problems and effects of institution building efforts, the lack of awareness of the importance of governance and ownership issues, and financial regulation that is too restrictive for microfinance operations. All three problems together explain why there are so few successful micro and small business institutions operating worldwide.
This paper studies the interactions between corporate law and VC exits by acquisitions, an increasingly common source of VC-related litigation. We find that transactions by VC funds under liquidity pressure are characterized by (i) a substantially lower sale price; (ii) a greater probability of industry outsiders as acquirers; (iii) a positive abnormal return for acquirers. These features indicate the existence of fire sales, which satisfy VCs' liquidation preferences but hurt common shareholders, leaving board members with conflicting fiduciary duties and litigation risks. Exploiting an important court ruling that establishes the board’s fiduciary duties to common shareholders as a priority, we find that after the ruling maturing VCs become less likely to exit by fire sales and they distribute cash to their investors less timely. However, VCs experience more difficult fundraising ex-ante, highlighting the potential cost of a common-favoring regime. Overall the evidence has important implications for optimal fiduciary duty design in VC-backed start-ups.
Paper Presented at the Conference on Workable Corporate Governance: Cross-Border Perspectives held in Paris, March 17-19, 1997 To appear in: A. Pezard/J.-M. Thiveaud: Workable Corporate Governance: Cross-Border Perspectives, Montchrestien, Paris 1997. The paper discusses the role of various constituencies in the corporate governance of a corporation from the perspective of incomplete contracts. A strict shareholder value orientation in the sense of a rule that at any time firm decisions should be made strictly in the interest of the present shareholders would make it difficult for the firm to establish long-term relationships as the potential partners would have to fear that, at a later stage of the co-operation, the shareholders or a management acting only on their behalf could exploit them because of the inevitable incompleteness of long-term contracts. One way of mitigating these problems is to put in place a corporate governance system which gives some active role to the other stakeholders or constituencies, or which makes their interests a well-defined element of the objective function of the firm. A commitment not to follow a policy of strict shareholder value maximization ex post can be efficient ex ante. Such a system would clearly differ from what is advocated by proponents of a "stakeholder approach", as it would limit the rights of the other constituencies to those which would have been agreed upon in a constitutional contract concluded between them and the founder of the firm at the time when long-term contracts are first established.
Recent empirical work shows that a better legal environment leads to lower expected rates of return in an international cross-section of countries. This paper investigates whether differences in firm-specific corporate governance also help to explain expected returns in a cross-section of firms within a single jurisdiction. Constructing a corporate governance rating (CGR) for German firms, we document a positive relationship between the CGR and firm value. In addition, there is strong evidence that expected returns are negatively correlated with the CGR, if dividend yields and price-earnings ratios are used as proxies for the cost of capital. Most results are robust for endogeneity, with causation running from corporate governance practices to firm fundamentals. Finally, an investment strategy that bought high-CGR firms and shorted low-CGR firms would have earned abnormal returns of around 12 percent on an annual basis during the sample period. We rationalize the empirical evidence with lower agency costs and/or the removal of certain governance malfunctions for the high-CGR firms.
A financial system can only perform its function of channelling funds from savers to investors if it offers sufficient assurance to the providers of the funds that they will reap the rewards which have been promised to them. To the extent that this assurance is not provided by contracts alone, potential financiers will want to monitor and influence managerial decisions. This is why corporate governance is an essential part of any financial system. It is almost obvious that providers of equity have a genuine interest in the functioning of corporate governance. However, corporate governance encompasses more than investor protection. Similar considerations also apply to other stakeholders who invest their resources in a firm and whose expectations of later receiving an appropriate return on their investment also depend on decisions at the level of the individual firm which would be extremely difficult to anticipate and prescribe in a set of complete contingent contracts. Lenders, especially long-term lenders, are one such group of stakeholders who may also want to play a role in corporate governance; employees, especially those with high skill levels and firm-specific knowledge, are another. The German corporate governance system is different from that of the Anglo-Saxon countries because it foresees the possibility, and even the necessity, to integrate lenders and employees in the governance of large corporations. The German corporate governance system is generally regarded as the standard example of an insider-controlled and stakeholder-oriented system. Moreover, only a few years ago it was a consistent system in the sense of being composed of complementary elements which fit together well. The first objective of this paper is to show why and in which respect these characterisations were once appropriate. However, the past decade has seen a wave of developments in the German corporate governance system, which make it worthwhile and indeed necessary to investigate whether German corporate governance has recently changed in a fundamental way. More specifically one can ask which elements and features of German corporate governance have in fact changed, why they have changed and whether those changes which did occur constitute a structural change which would have converted the old insider-controlled system into an outsider-controlled and shareholder-oriented system and/or would have deprived it of its former consistency. It is the second purpose of this paper to answer these questions.