Read more
for many years been heavily dependent on bank financing, and this situation has not changed fundamentally. In his paper on stock exchange governance in the European Union Guido Ferrarini discusses the relative merits of member and investor ownership and compares stock exchange regulation in a number of EU countries. Faced with increasing competition amongst themselves and against other enterprises that offer transaction services, such as proprietary trading systems, it is essential for European stock exchanges to improve their efficiency and to generate volume. Large investments in new information technology are necessary in order to preserve competitiveness in agIobaI financial market. The implementation of the ISD has accelerated cross-border transaction activity of member firms and investors and strengthened the pressure for convergence of national stock exchange laws in the EU. In their paper, Francesco Giavazzi and Marco Battaglini look at the role played by banks in privatization processes. Banks can be involved in such processes in several ways. They may themselves be the objects of privatization since in many countries a significant fraction of the banking industry is publicly owned. This is the case in France, Spain and Italy. But banks can also be important buyers of the equity of industrial firms sold by the government if they are allowed to do so. The authors characterize privatizations as a very good opportunity to set up the right environment for the development of new financial intermediaries and in general for asound corporate governance system.
List of contents
The Effect of Board Size and Composition on Corporate Performance.- Banks and Corporate Governance in Italy: A Two-Tier Model.- The New Financial Landscape and its Impact on Corporate Governance.- Privatization and Corporate Governance: Some Lessons from the Experience of Transitional Economies.- Corporate Governance in the Netherlands.- Changing Corporate Governance in Japan.- Stock Exchange Governance in the European Union.- Should We Trust Banks When They Sit On the Board of Directors?.- Corporate Governance, West and East: A Synthesis of the EU Framework in the Perspective of Enlargement.- The Role of Institutional Investors in the Corporate Governance of Financial Institutions: the UK Case.- Corporate Governance, Competition and Performance.- Shareholding Concentration and Pyramidal Ownership Structures in Belgium.- Insurance Company Ownership in the Netherlands: Implications for Corporate Governance and Competition.
