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Why we need to rethink the UK's approach to corporate governance regulation

My keynote speech at the University of Sheffield UKIERI-CRAFiC Workshop on Financial Development and  Corporate Governance in Emerging Market Economies is available from here, I argue that the three pillars of UK corporate governance, i.e. boards of directors, institutional investors and the "comply or explain" approach, need to be revisited.

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DMGT Plc - Not your typical UK Plc

I haven't posted any of these corporate governance case studies for a while. As the updated version of my corporate governance textbook is about to be published on 11 March 2018, I thought it was a good time to investigate the corporate governance of another interesting company. The company I have chosen is the Daily Mail and General Trust Plc (DMGT Plc), a UK company. This is a media company which owns a.o. the tabloid The Daily Mail and the free newspaper Metro. It also has a holding in Euromoney Institutional Plc and Zoopla.



I chose DMGT Plc as it is not your run-of-the-mill UK stock-market listed Plc. The typical example of a UK exchange-listed corporation would be a Plc with dispersed ownership and weak control (see Section 3.3 of my textbook International Corporate Governanceor its updated version Corporate Governance. A Global Perspective). This is what I call combination A in my textbook (see below figure).


It what follows, I shall be using the 2017 annual report of DMGT P…
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Corporate Governance. A Global Perspective.

The second edition of the highly acclaimed textbook "International Corporate Governance" is scheduled to be published by Cengage on 11 March 2018. The new edition will follow the style and approach of the first edition, but its title will change to "Corporate Governance. A Global Perspective". The book can already be pre-ordered from Blackwells.

A new chapter on boards of directors has been added to the book. There has been extensive updating of the material throughout the book, reflecting advances in research on and practice in corporate governance (full details can be found here). The table of contents (subject to change) of version two is as follows:

Part I – Introduction to Corporate Governance
Defining corporate governance and key theoretical modelsCorporate control across the worldControl versus ownership rightsPart II – Macro Corporate Governance
Taxonomies of corporate governance systemsCorporate governance, types of financial systems and economic growthCorpor…
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Dos and Don'ts of Approaching a Potential PhD Supervisor

Similar to most academics, I get lots of unsolicited emails from potential PhD students asking me whether I would be willing to supervise them. Hence, I thought I should put together the Dos and Don'ts of doing this. DosDon'tsEmail only potential supervisors in your area of research.Email everybody in the department or school. Start your email with "Dear Sir or Madam".Specify a topic that is of interest to you. Be as specific as possible. Ideally, you should attach a detailed research proposal to your email.State that you want to do a PhD in an area as large and vague as e.g. finance. Write that, since the age of 5, it has been your dream to do a PhD. (I didn't know what a PhD was at that age!) This is not a great start.The choice of the university is an important consideration. So is identifying a suitable supervisor. Do your research by consulting staff profiles. Choose a supervisor who is research active in your field of interest.Email a potential supervisor …
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