The effect of board size and composition on European bank performance

Banks are “special” financial institutions generating distinct corporate governance challenges. The present paper examines the relationship between two of the most pertinent corporate governance factors—that is, the size of the Board of Directors and the proportion of non-executive directors—and firm performance on a sample of 58 large European banks over the period 2002–2004. The empirical analysis embraces a number of bank-specific variables. Our results reveal that bank profitability is negatively related to the size of the Board of Directors, while the impact of Board composition, although positive in all models, is, in most cases, insignificant. The results are robust after controlling for firm-specific variables.      

Family-owned,limited close corporations and protection of ownership

Protected ownership and freedom of contracts are two basic parts of the institutional framework of successful countries according to Douglass North, winner of the Nobel Prize in 1993. The incentives to make long-term investments are strengthened if ownership rights are protected and freedom of contracts is a basic element in the process of efficient allocation of scarce resources. An important engine in prosperous societies is the family firm. Most companies in these societies can be classified as family firms and a major part of GDP is produced by family businesses. Consequently, how ownership is protected in family firms is an important issue.Three important factors of private ownership of property are the rights to determine use of owned assets, the return generated from them and to transfer the assets at mutually agreeable terms to a new owner(s).The incentives of a founder entrepreneur to put efforts into the establishment of a firm are determined by all the three factors. We will here pay special attention to the third factor, transfer of the ownership of the firm. The founder often places contractual restrictions on such transfers to ensure that the structure of ownership is stable and that the firm stays in the family. The possibility to do so is part of the freedom of contracts and is associated with the extent of ownership held as well as the incentives to invest in new businesses.This paper is primarily about how protection of family ownership can be achieved from a legal point of view and discusses the reasons to enforce these legal relationships in the future for second, third, fourth etc. generations of family owners.     

Bureaupreneurs in China: we did it our way

This article explores the different and sometimes conflicting explanations of the success of the collective enterprises (town–village-enterprise) in China during the first phase of transition (1979–1995). It is argued that explanations, relying on cultural variables are not sustainable and this for two reasons. First, the importance of the collective enterprise is shrinking while the private sector is clearly on the rise. Second, other factors, referring to characteristics of the local and central political, administrative and economic environment, in which the Chinese enterprise has to (had to?) operate, provide for a sufficient explanation of the peculiar structure of the Chinese collective enterprises. These enterprises are seen as the result of ?bureau-preneurship’ because local bureaucrats were integrated in their management in order to pre-empt predatory behaviour and to facilitate the relationships with the central institutions. The article contributes to the property rights’ theory of the firm as it analyses an empirically very important case in which firms with unclear property rights and structures, apparently not conducive for incentives, might still be the most efficient option.     

Umschichtungen im Konzern – keine Änderung der wirtschaftlichen Einflussmöglichkeiten

Keine ?nderung der wirtschaftlichen Einflussm?glichkeiten liegt vor, wenn es zu Anteilsübertragungen oder Umgründungen zwischen konzernverbundenen Gesellschaften kommt, aber sich bei jenen Personen nichts ?ndert, die auf der obersten Ebene den Einfluss ausüben. Derartige Handlungen innerhalb eines Konzernverbunds verwirklichen nicht den Tatbestand des § 12a Abs 3 MRG.     

Vorzeitige Auflösung des Mietvertrages – keine Schaffung eines funktionierenden "Urban Entertainment Centers (UEC)"

Die wirtschaftlich unzutreffende Einsch?tzung des Gesch?ftsganges, mit der schon bei Abschluss des Vertrages gerechnet werden konnte, stellt keinen Grund für die vorzeitige Aufl?sung eines Bestandvertrages dar. Die bei Vertragsabschluss nicht voll absch?tzbaren Auswirkungen des Konkurrenzkampfes k?nnen nicht Anlass für die Vertragsaufl?sung sein. Es ist m?glich, dass zwar die Voraussetzungen für eine Zinsminderung, nicht jedoch die Voraussetzungen für eine vorzeitige Vertragsaufhebung vorliegen.     

Meanings of terrorism

Terrorism is a notoriously plastic word, depending on user, audience, and political context. This paper focuses on shifts in its meanings since the early 1970s. As federal statutes made terrorism a criminal offense, common usage changed from a broad meaning to one that specified terrorism as a political crime. The argument is that the state shapes meaning and public discourse through law. Peircean semiotics and the semiotic philosophy of Russian linguist Vološinov provide a framework to explore relationships among politics, law, and civil life. Applied to the events of September 11, 2001 such an analysis further allows better understanding of certain interpreters of the September 11 attacks, notably Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, and Jürgen Habermas.     

The legal file

In this essay I examine the criminal defense file. I argue that being a largely neglected “object” of the legal field, upon a close examination, the file discloses its intriguing materiality as what is predicated on the structure of the fold that allows for the objective, virtual, and narrative spheres to overlap in a specific act-object, which, with Gilles Deleuze, I call objectile. A subsequent phenomenological analysis of the legal file as objectile shows how its constitutive features help the attorney shape ordinary matters into plentiful matters, turning the file into a locally designed sign system. Once exposed, this system reveals its relations to the legal system at large, with individual activities, institutional practices, and legal procedures all being a part of a complex manifold that is law.     

Trial and Error – Failing and Learning in Criminal Proceedings

This paper addresses the selective mechanisms by which criminal proceedings produce strong arguments. It does so by focusing on the failing of argument themes (topoi) in the course of criminal proceedings, rather than on their career. In a further step, the notion of failing is bound to learning: different forms of failing point at different ways and places of learning. The study is comparative, relating cases from four different legal regimes (England, USA, Italy and Germany) that are taken from four extensive ethnographic studies in defense lawyer’s firms. We will track down the failures of topoi at three different stages (pre-trial, trial, and deliberation) in our different legal regimes. Failing occurs in all proceedings in various modes and at different stages. We argue that those modes as well as the different stages at which they occur point at the spots in the respective procedures that allow for learning about the inherent conceptions of “good reasons.”