When minority shareholder laws are strong, then minority shareholders should have more power to affect board composition and structure. Therefore, countries with strong minority shareholder laws should have ‘good’ corporate boards of directors (i.e., one that looks out for minority shareholders’ bests interests). Assuming that boards with independent directors and fewer directors are indicative...

Concentrated ownership of large listed companies is widespread throughout the world, and Germany is typical in this respect. This paper proposes a method of distinguishing empirically between the beneficial and harmful effects of ownership concentration, and applies it to German data. The results show that, for most types of largest shareholder, the beneficial effects on minority shareholders o...

Instead of traditional principal–agent conflicts espoused in most research dealing with developed economies, principal–principal conflicts have been identified as a major concern of corporate governance in emerging economies. Principal–principal conflicts between controlling shareholders and minority shareholders result from concentrated ownership, extensive family ownership and control, busine...

Purpose – This study examines whether the type of ultimate controllers (i.e., private vs. state) affects corporate disclosure quality and whether the relationship between the type of ultimate controllers and corporate disclosure quality is moderated by the separation of ownership and control. Design/methodology/approach – This study employs the data of 405 Chinese listed firms in 2005. We revie...