Recent developments in German corporate governance.

This paper provides an overview of the German corporate governance system. We review the governance role of large shareholders, creditors, the product market and the supervisory board. We also discuss the importance of mergers and acquisitions, the market in block trades, and the lack of a hostile takeover market. Given that Germany is often referred to as a bank-based economy, we pay particular attention to the role of the universal banks (Hausbanken). We show that the German system is characterised by a market for partial corporate control, large shareholders and bank/creditor monitoring, a two-tier (management and supervisory) board with co-determination between shareholders and employees on the supervisory board, a disciplinary product-market, and corporate governance regulation largely based on EU directives but with deep roots in the German codes and legal doctrine. Another important feature of the German system is its corporate governance efficiency criterion which is focused on the maximisation of stakeholder value rather than shareholder value. However, the German corporate governance system has experienced many important changes over the last decade. First, the relationship between ownership or control concentration and profitability has changed over time. Second, the pay-for-performance relation is influenced by large shareholder control: in firms with controlling blockholders and when a universal bank is simultaneously an equity- and debtholder, the pay-for-performance relation is lower than in widely-held firms or blockholder-controlled firms. Third, since 1995 several major regulatory initiatives (including voluntary codes) have increased transparency and accountability

Firm Size and Geographical Aggregation: An Empirical Appraisal in Industrial Location Firm Size and Geographical Aggregation: An Empirical Appraisal in Industrial Location

Abstract This paper asses the relevance of size discrimination and dis-aggregate data in studying the decision to locate a start-up concern. Essentially we compare three econometric speci…cations using Catalan data: i) a multinomial logit with 4 and 41 alternatives (provinces and comarques, respectively) in which …rm size is the main covariate; ii) a condicional logit with 4 and 41 alternatives including attributes of the sites as well as interactions size-site; iii) a Poisson with the comarques and all the spatial choice set (721 municipalities). The empirical results suggest that ignoring these issues may produce misleading conclusions

Enhanced hydrothermal resistance of Y-TZP ceramics through colloidal processing

Two commercial zirconia powders with 3 mol% of yttria (TZ3YE and TZ3YS, labeled as ZE and ZS, respectively) sup- plied by Tosoh (Japan) were used for this study. Maximum colloidal stability for ZE was achieved by dispersing the pow- ders in a mixture of water/ethanol of 90:10 (wt/wt) using a sonication probe. The rheological behavior of the suspensions was optimized in terms of solids content ranging from 20 to 33 vol% and sonication time (0 – 6 min), the best results being obtained after 2 min. ZS samples were prepared to a solids loading of 30 vol% in water dispersing with 2 min-sonication. Samples obtained by slip casting in plaster molds were used for dynamic sintering studies, and fully dense and nanostructured specimens were obtained at temperatures of 1300 ° C – 1350 ° C (ZE samples) and 1400 ° C per 2 h (ZS samples). The Hardness ( H ) and Young’s Modulus ( E ) properties of the specimens were studied by nanoindentation technique giving 17 and 250 GPa mean values for H and E , respectively. The specimens were then forced to a low-temperature degradation (LTD) treatment at 130 ° C for 240 h in steps of 60 h. Raman spectroscopy and nanoindentation results of hydrothermally treated samples showed the absence of transformation from tetragonal to monoclinic phase until 180 h whereas the mechanical properties maintained constant even at the sample surface. After 240 h of LTD, the monoclinic phase was detected on all specimens by Raman peaks centered at 180, 191, and 383 cm 1 . The nanoin- dentation study revealed an important loss of mechanical fea- tures reaching 10 and 175 GPa for H and E , respectively. In the case of the ZS specimens, no monoclinic phase is detected after 240 h of LTD treatment and no decay of E or H is detected. The free defect microstructure reached for the ZS specimen revealed a higher hydrothermal resistance so that it is concluded that the excellent behavior against thermal degrada- tion is possible due to the large uniformity obtained by colloi- dal processing rather than the particle size of the starting powdersPeer Reviewe

Is the German system of corporate governance converging towards the Anglo-American model?

Convergence, Corporate governance, Germany, G32, G34, G38,