The objective of this paper is to examine the impact the Financial Services Modernization Act (FSMA) of 1999 has on the consolidation of the banking industry. The FSMA allows banks to simultaneously offer commercial banking, investment, and insurance services. I find a strong positive market response to the announcement of bank acquisition of brokerage firms (10.2 percent) and insurance companies (9.3 percent), but no significant response to bank acquisitions. I also find support for two complimentary hypotheses that explain the long-run returns to the acquiring banks. The "product-market spillover hypothesis" states that the post-consolidation returns of the acquirer are directly related to the banks' ability to cross market their products and services to a more diverse client base, while the efficiency hypothesis states that banks acquire financial services companies to realize efficiency gains resulting from exploiting economies of scale. Finally, I show that the premiums paid in the post-FSMA acquisitions increases with the diversity of the transaction. In addition, this study is the first to link managerial turnover to mutual fund managerial structure in a manner that indicates the strong presence of a conflict of interests between investors and fund sponsors in an area of fund governance where we have been led to believe there are strong and well-functioning mechanisms to guard against the exploitation of investors. I utilize the unique characteristics of mutual funds where managers sometimes manage multiple "firms" simultaneously, something not generally observed in industrial firms. I test the governance mechanisms using the mutual fund complexes management structure; unitary and multiple fund management (UFM and MFM). This study shows that UFMs tend to have higher asset growth rates and higher fees than MFMs, suggesting that sponsors can benefit more from keeping them intact. I find that changing managers under the UFM is more costly to sponsors making them more reluctant to fire poor performers. I document that underperforming UFM are -2.77 percent less likely to be replaced than their underperforming MFM counterparts. In addition, the conflict of interests affect the replacement decision, as high expense ratio fund managers have a lower probability of replacement for a given level of underperformance.

The aim of this diploma thesis lies in detail description of the whole Schengen system including its links to the general EU legal framework and in critical analysis of selected issues that the Schengen system is currently facing. The first chapter of the thesis deals with a general legal framework of the free movement of persons and the area of freedom, security and justice. The second chapter is devoted to the formation, development, actual legal framework and territorial scope of the Schengen system. Further there is a detail description of schengen cooperation with emphasis put on the protection of external borders and FRONTEX agency. By using a journal articles and relevant case law of the Court of Justice of the EU the third chapter is aiming to analyze selected issues of realization of Schengen system and to name its current challanges.