Abstract

Choice and performance of corporate governance mechanisms in the German financial sector and the financial crisis* Corporate governance (CG) has been one of the most widely discussed topics over the last few years. Especially the role of the financial sector within the current financial and economic crisis has led to a massive loss of trust and put pressure not only on companies within the financial sector but also on policy makers to reform CG. Nevertheless, gov-ernance shortcomings contributing to the crisis of confidence are not uniquely American as one could expect taking a look at Lehman Brothers or Bear Stearns, however, with companies also in Germany adding their own governance shortcomings to the crisis. We try to find evidence on such shortcomings researching on a sample of the biggest com-panies within the German financial sector listed in the Prime Standard segment at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. We identify shortcomings in compliance with the German Corporate Governance Code (GCGC) mainly in the cooperation between management board and supervisory board (one of the most remarkable characteristics of the German two-tier system) and also on transparency & disclosure on CG (e.g., on remuneration issues) and try to give answer on how to solve such problems in the future