Evolution of Ownership and Control Around the World

Evolution of Ownership and Control Around the World

Author: Julian R. Franks

Publisher:

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 46

ISBN-13:

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This chapter documents the evolution of ownership and control of firms around the world over a hundred year period from the beginning of the 20th century to today. It records the substantial changes that have taken place in the nature of stock markets and contrasts these with the persistent patterns of ownership that are observed in many countries around the world. In particular, it documents the growth in dispersion in ownership that took place in many countries from the early part of the 20th century. It reports that this took place in the absence of formal systems of investor protection but in the presence of institutional developments that facilitated the building of trust between investors and firms. Contrary to the view that concentrations of ownership necessarily undermine the operation of equity markets by exploiting minority interests, the chapter argues that in many countries they played a central role not just in exercising control but also in promoting relations between investors and firms that were central to the development of their stock markets. In particular, concentrations of ownership in the hands of families may have been a source of public as well as private benefits. The chapter concludes by looking at recent changes and argues that these reinforce the long-run patterns of the relative decline of the UK and US stock markets, the continued decline of family firms in the UK, the growth of private equity and the emergence of new forms of concentrated shareholdings.


A History of Corporate Governance around the World

A History of Corporate Governance around the World

Author: Randall K. Morck

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2007-11-01

Total Pages: 700

ISBN-13: 0226536831

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For many Americans, capitalism is a dynamic engine of prosperity that rewards the bold, the daring, and the hardworking. But to many outside the United States, capitalism seems like an initiative that serves only to concentrate power and wealth in the hands of a few hereditary oligarchies. As A History of Corporate Governance around the World shows, neither conception is wrong. In this volume, some of the brightest minds in the field of economics present new empirical research that suggests that each side of the debate has something to offer the other. Free enterprise and well-developed financial systems are proven to produce growth in those countries that have them. But research also suggests that in some other capitalist countries, arrangements truly do concentrate corporate ownership in the hands of a few wealthy families. A History of Corporate Governance around the World provides historical studies of the patterns of corporate governance in several countries-including the large industrial economies of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States; larger developing economies like China and India; and alternative models like those of the Netherlands and Sweden.


Corporate Ownership and Control

Corporate Ownership and Control

Author: Shalini Perera

Publisher: World Scientific

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 446

ISBN-13: 9812837477

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The governance of companies is of importance to developing countries due to the link between effective corporate governance and economic development. Ownership and control of public companies, except in the US and UK, is often in the hands of a few individuals, families or corporate groups and impact on corporate governance and economic development.Using Sri Lanka as an illustrative example, Corporate Ownership and Control sets out the implications of corporate ownership and control structures on the governance of companies, and suggests a reform agenda to meet the challenges posed by such structures. Any analysis into the reform of corporate governance in developing countries should begin with a focus on the local market structures that define its adaptation and effectiveness. The issues explored in the book provide an insight into ownership and control structures in Sri Lanka, the costs and benefits of such structures, and the necessary reform framework to promote effective corporate governance. The analysis can be used to both understand the impact of ownership structures on corporate governance, and suggest how corporate governance issues arising from such structures should be resolved in order to promote economic development and growth.


Corporate Ownership and Control

Corporate Ownership and Control

Author: Brian R. Cheffins

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780199596393

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Much discussion on corporate governance assumes companies are owned and controlled separately, yet this is not the norm worldwide. This book explores the foundations of separation in UK companies, asking how the company came to prominence and why and how the UK stock market came to be dominated by institutional shareholders.


The Handbook of the Economics of Corporate Governance

The Handbook of the Economics of Corporate Governance

Author: Benjamin Hermalin

Publisher: Elsevier

Published: 2017-09-18

Total Pages: 762

ISBN-13: 0444635408

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The Handbook of the Economics of Corporate Governance, Volume One, covers all issues important to economists. It is organized around fundamental principles, whereas multidisciplinary books on corporate governance often concentrate on specific topics. Specific topics include Relevant Theory and Methods, Organizational Economic Models as They Pertain to Governance, Managerial Career Concerns, Assessment & Monitoring, and Signal Jamming, The Institutions and Practice of Governance, The Law and Economics of Governance, Takeovers, Buyouts, and the Market for Control, Executive Compensation, Dominant Shareholders, and more. Providing excellent overviews and summaries of extant research, this book presents advanced students in graduate programs with details and perspectives that other books overlook. Concentrates on underlying principles that change little, even as the empirical literature moves on Helps readers see corporate governance systems as interrelated or even intertwined external (country-level) and internal (firm-level) forces Reviews the methodological tools of the field (theory and empirical), the most relevant models, and the field’s substantive findings, all of which help point the way forward


Owning the Earth

Owning the Earth

Author: Andro Linklater

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2014-01-01

Total Pages: 497

ISBN-13: 1408815745

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Barely two centuries ago, most of the world's productive land still belonged either communally to traditional societies or to the higher powers of monarch or church. But that pattern, and the ways of life that went with it, were consigned to history as a result of the most creative - and, at the same time, destructive - cultural force in the modern era: the idea of individual, exclusive ownership of land. This notion laid waste to traditional communal civilisations, displacing entire peoples from their homelands, and brought into being a unique concept of individual freedom and a distinct form of representative government and democratic institutions. Other great civilizations, in Russia, China, and the Islamic world, evolved very different structures of land ownership, and thus very different forms of government and social responsibility.The seventeenth-century English surveyor William Petty was the first man to recognise the connection between private property and free-market capitalism; the American radical Wolf Ladejinsky redistributed land in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea after the Second World War to make possible the emergence of Asian tiger economies. Through the eyes of these remarkable individuals and many more, including Chinese emperors and German peasants, Andro Linklater here presents the evolution of land ownership to offer a radically new view of mankind's place on the planet.


The Evolution of Shareholder Voting Rights

The Evolution of Shareholder Voting Rights

Author: Henry Hansmann

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

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The nineteenth century saw the standardization and rapid spread of the modern business corporation around the world. Yet those early corporations differed from their contemporary counterparts in important ways. Most obviously, they commonly deviated from the one-share-one-vote rule that is customary today, instead adopting restricted voting schemes that favored small over large shareholders. In recent years, both legal scholars and economists have sought to explain these schemes as a rough form of investor protection, shielding small shareholders from exploitation by controlling shareholders in an era when investor protection law was weak. We argue, in contrast, that restricted voting rules generally served not to protect shareholders as investors, but to protect them as consumers. The firms adopting such rules were frequently local monopolies that provided vital infrastructural services such as transportation, banking, and insurance. The local merchants, farmers, and landholders who used these services were the firms' principal shareholders. They commonly purchased shares not in the expectation of profit, but to finance collective goods. Restricted shareholder voting assured that control of the firms' services would not fall into the hands of monopolists or competitors. In effect, the corporations had much the character of consumer cooperatives. This perspective also sheds light on the unusual importance given to the doctrine of ultra vires in the nineteenth century. While current legal and economic scholarship has focused incessantly on the separation between ownership and control, the prior separation between ownership and consumption, accomplished by the late nineteenth century, was another fundamental but generally overlooked turning point in the history of the business corporation. Understanding this transformation throws light not just on historical practices, but also on contemporary debates over deviations from the rule of one-share-one-vote.


Political Power and Corporate Control

Political Power and Corporate Control

Author: Peter A. Gourevitch

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2010-06-20

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 1400837014

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Why does corporate governance--front page news with the collapse of Enron, WorldCom, and Parmalat--vary so dramatically around the world? This book explains how politics shapes corporate governance--how managers, shareholders, and workers jockey for advantage in setting the rules by which companies are run, and for whom they are run. It combines a clear theoretical model on this political interaction, with statistical evidence from thirty-nine countries of Europe, Asia, Africa, and North and South America and detailed narratives of country cases. This book differs sharply from most treatments by explaining differences in minority shareholder protections and ownership concentration among countries in terms of the interaction of economic preferences and political institutions. It explores in particular the crucial role of pension plans and financial intermediaries in shaping political preferences for different rules of corporate governance. The countries examined sort into two distinct groups: diffuse shareholding by external investors who pick a board that monitors the managers, and concentrated blockholding by insiders who monitor managers directly. Examining the political coalitions that form among or across management, owners, and workers, the authors find that certain coalitions encourage policies that promote diffuse shareholding, while other coalitions yield blockholding-oriented policies. Political institutions influence the probability of one coalition defeating another.


Political Determinants of Corporate Governance

Political Determinants of Corporate Governance

Author: Mark J. Roe

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9780199205301

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In a painstaking analysis, Roe (law, Harvard Law School) examines the impact of a nation's strong social policies on the corporate governance, suggesting that stronger social policies can cause an American style of diffuse ownership among shareholders to fail. The link between social policies and corporate governance is examined statistically for a large number of countries, and in case studies for seven: Italy, Germany, Sweden, the UK, France, Japan, and the US. Product markets, securities markets, and the ability of corporate and economic structures to induce a political backlash are discussed. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).