Inhalt
Aufsatz: Seite 101–119
Stefano Battilossi
Corrupting a German Model?
The Corporate Governance of Italian Universal Banks, 1894–1933
Theoretical considerations suggest that corporate governance mechanisms, such as ownership and agency relationships, may play an important role in influencing the risk taking behavior of financial intermediaries – and consequently financial stability – as well as in reducing conflicts of interest and moral hazard in insider systems in which mehr...
universal banks enter into a long-term relationship with industrial companies. The present paper explores a series of corporate governance conflicts that emerged within the main Italian universal banks from the mid-1890s until the beginning of the 1930s. The pre-wartime period was characterized by conflicts between shareholders and executive managers concerning relationship banking. Foreign shareholders disliked the inclination of managers to allow the banks to take long-term equity holdings in industrial firms and questioned their use of business practices, such as repurchase agreements and guarantees, which led to further immobilizations in connected companies. This practice was regarded as an unwelcome departure from the prudent pattern of business pursued by German and French banks, and shareholders struggled to maintain control of the managers' behaviour. The war and the ensuing reorganization of the banks’ ownership structures led to a destruction of internal mechanisms of corporate governance and uncontrolled risk taking, which turned the banks de facto into industrial holdings and eventually brought the Italian system of 'universal-with-relationship'-banking to an end.
weniger...
PDF
Aufsatz: Seite 120–136
Leslie Hannah
The Development of Japanese Banking in the 20th Century
Reflections in Western Mirrors
In the west, the history of Japanese finance is still often treated, following Gerschenkron, as a case of a bank-orientated rather than a stock exchange-orientated system. It is debateable whether this was true for most of the 20th century. The governance (by the state, shareholders, market and boards) of 20th century Japanese banks and the evolution of mehr...
their banking policies had strong Anglo-Saxon components, despite being mainly based on continental European models. While the largest early banks were strongly state-influenced, they were, like the many private banks, governed by internally generated standards and quite market-orientated incentives (similar to German ‘Tantiemen’). Modern scholarship has developed analyses of the alleged post-war Japanese 'main bank' ('Hausbank') system which suggest Japanese 'keiretsu' exceptionalism as a source of economic success, but others suggest that bank governance and policy outcomes were the result of standard capitalist experimentation and variety in which shareholders and managers negotiated many different (but boundedly rational, market-driven, and not entirely perfect) solutions, very much as in the west.
weniger...
PDF
Aufsatz: Seite 137–163
Christopher Kobrak
Banking on Governance
U.K. and U.S. Financial Markets and Management in the 20th Century
Banking occupies a rather unique space in corporate governance literature. Historically and in some corporate governance systems today, banks serve as active intermediaries, resolving conflicts among shareholders, managers and other stakeholders. In some systems, the German for example, they even replaced direct government regulation in mehr...
overseeing companies and markets. Although most banks are private, with the usual corporate government issues – shareholders rights, incentive schemes, board responsibilities and constitution, reporting and stock exchange requirements – many today are completely or partially in government hands. Moreover, much of their governance is in the form of national (in some countries, state also), central bank, industry association, and supranational regulatory bodies. As part of the fallout from our recent financial crisis, these collective mechanisms have come under particularly harsh criticism. Abuses in pay and moral hazard issues, for example, are often seen as convincing evidence of a complete breakdown in bank governance. This paper deals with the changes in U.S. and British bank governance in the 20th century; how and why their own national brands of financial regulations varied overtime. Inspired by changes in financial markets and theory – and buttressed by technological and management changes – in some key respects, these two countries have over the past few decades drifted away from national oversight without any convincing supranational or private replacement, a transition that has been less dramatic in some other countries but that has, nonetheless, set the pace for changes in bank governance in most major markets.
weniger...
PDF
Aufsatz: Seite 164–197
Reinhard H. Schmidt / Felix Noth
Die Entwicklung der Corporate Governance deutscher Banken seit 1950 / The Development of Corporate Governance of German Banks since 1950
The present paper gives an overview of the development of Corporate Governance of German banks since the 1950s. The focus will be on economic analysis. The most striking changes in Corporate Governance occurred with the ownership structure of commercial banks, in particular with the major joint-stock banks. In addition to that, the capital market has mehr...
become a core element of Corporate Governance in all major German banks, which have replaced their prior concentration on the interests of a broadly defined circle of stakeholders by a one-sided concentration on shareholders' interests. In contrast, with savings banks and cooperative cooperative banks, Corporate Governance has remained unchanged for the most part. Exceptions to this are the regional state banks: in their case, after they had turned away from traditional business models and in particular following the discontinuation of the guarantee obligation, the problems of their Corporate Governance, which were already discernible beforehand, became quite obvious. If you include the financial crisis, beginning in 2007, in the analysis, it becomes evident that it was precisely a Corporate Governance unilaterally geared to shareholders’ interest and the efficiency of the capital market that materially contributed to the evolution and widening of the crisis.
weniger...
PDF
Rezensionen: Seite 198–210
> Rezensionen (pdf)
PDF
