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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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 …

The private equity deals that fail to justify 'fast buck' strategiesBy Marc Goergen, Cardiff University; Geoffrey Wood, University of Warwick, and Noel O'Sullivan, Loughborough UniversityThere is an ongoing and very heated debate between the unconditional supporters of private equity and their opponents. It’s not hard to see why. On the surface, these investors can often buy fragile companies, load on debt to fund strategic change and sack workers in a bid for efficiency. It can look ruthless, but the industry claims it simply works.The British Private Equity & Venture Capital Association (BVCA), preach what they deem to be the undeniable benefits of private equity. For example, the trade lobby group wrote in 2010 that:Private equity investment has been demonstrated to contribute significantly to companies’ growth. Private equity backed companies outperform leading UK businesses.In contrast, Ed Miliband in his speech at the 2011 annual Labour Party conference accused p…

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…

Prof. Marc Goergen on Corporate Governance

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