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International Corporate Governance – Translations

The highly acclaimed textbook  International Corporate Governance  has now been published in a Chinese translation by  China Machine Press  and a Greek translation by Diplographia . The Chinese version is available from  Amazon China . The Greek version includes a comprehensive 65-page introduction on the Greek corporate governance system by  Dr. Panagiotis Staikouras ,  Assistant Professor, University of Piraeus.  The original English version was published by  Pearson Education  and is available  in print  as well as via  Kindle  and  Vitalsource . Endorsements on the back cover: 'An excellent textbook which truly stands out. It is better than any book on corporate governance that I have seen',  Luc Renneboog, Tilburg University 'Marc Goergen's book on corporate governance is by far the best textbook that has been published on the topic. He has done a wonderful job of covering the topi...

The relationship between the CEO and the chairman of the board of directors

Elsewhere on this blog I have already argued that improving corporate governance is not as simple as increasing the number of independent, non-executive directors on the board. In some instances, increasing board independence may cause more harm than good as some firms may require friendlier boards, with an emphasis on providing advice rather than monitoring. In a new study I have published in the Journal of Corporate Finance  (the pre-publication version can be obtained from here ) and which is co-authored with Peter Limbach and Meik Scholz from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, we find that the age difference between the CEO and the chairman of the board of directors also matters. We argue that greater age dissimilarity between the CEO and the chair is likely to increase cognitive conflict between the two, which likely results in more scrutinising by the chair of the decisions proposed  by the CEO. Such cognitive conflict is likely to be greatest when the...

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.

Approach adopted by "International Corporate Governance"

N.B. This textbook now exists in  a new, 2018 version  published by Cengage and with a different title ("Corporate Governance. A Global Perspective"). I had been toying for a long time with the idea of writing a textbook on corporate governance. However, it was only when I moved to Cardiff Business School and was asked to teach an entire course on corporate governance that I seriously started thinking about this. When I was designing the course I felt uneasy about adopting one of the existing textbooks. I found these to be very limited in terms of their scope and their view of corporate governance. Not only were these textbooks Anglo-centric, but they also limited corporate governance to accountability and compliance. My view is that corporate governance is much more than this.The main approach I took in my book is to study the conflicts of interests that corporations may suffer from. The book also adopts an international approach, comparing the advantages and drawbacks of...

Corporate governance crossword

The private equity deals that fail to justify 'fast buck' strategies By Marc Goergen , Cardiff University ; Geoffrey Wood , University of Warwick , and Noel O'Sullivan , Loughborough University There 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 Par...

Ooh Danone – More than just yogurt

My previous blog was on the US corporation Google Inc . This time I'll be covering the French public limited company ( Société Anonyme or S.A. in French) Danone S.A., a global food company. This is a pretty complex case study and I do not intend to do it full justice here. What follows is a summary of what I believe are key characteristics of Danone S.A.'s control and ownership structure. As it was the case for my previous blog, this case is built on  the concepts discussed in Chapters 1-3 of  "International Corporate Governance" . Danone S.A.'s most recent company report (or 'registration document') is available from here . You might need to click on '2013' to obtain the most recent available company report at the time of writing this blog.  This might be obvious, but it is always a good idea to start by having a look at the table of contents. This should give you a fairly good idea where to find important information on control and own...