We discuss the effects of rising shareholder power on distribution and capital accumulation in a Kaleckian model. Increasing shareholder power is associated with decreasing managements' animal spirits, on the one hand, and increasing dividends distributed to shareholders, on the other hand. In the short run, increasing shareholder power may either have positive ('finance-led'), negative ('normal') or intermediate ('profits without investment') effects on capacity utilisation, profits and capital accumulation. In the medium run, the positive ('finance-led') effects may be maintained in a stable environment under very special conditions, whereas the negative ('normal') and the intermediate ('profits without investment') effects turn into cumulative disequilibrium processes with falling rates of capacity utilisation, profits and capital accumulation and rising debt- and rentiers' equity-capital-ratios. (author´s abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

There are two tasks of this dissertation. Firstly, it will make a contribution from a theoretical perspective. Some Western scholars conclude that rules and institutions transplanted from Western jurisdictions have not worked well in the Chinese legal system so far. This is because the level of consistency between the transplanted rules or institutions and the local context is still at a low level. However, this dissertation takes a different position. By solving a series of unanswered questions, it will make a theoretical contribution to the scholarship on comparative corporate governance in the context of the transitional economy. By and large, it will answer the question: "why can China, as representative of a transitional economy, not escape from the faith of legal transplant in its legal reform of corporate governance". Secondly, this dissertation will make a contribution from a practical perspective. Many Chinese lawyers and Western scholars complain that Chinese company law is suffering deeply from the problem of ambiguity. Indeed, it is poorly and inconsistently drafted. There is, nevertheless, no systematic study on how to solve this problem in a pragmatic manner. In light of the proposed theoretical research, this dissertation will provide an important response on this issue. It rebuilds the director's fiduciary duties and shareholder's fiduciary duties by inserting some workable legal rules from the UK into the existing legal regime in China.

"Mémoire présenté à la Faculté des études supérieures En vue de l'obtention du grade de Maître en droit (LL.M.)" / This thesis aims to consider the debates in the field of corporate governance in the fact that there have been and will be dramatic changes in the structure of corporate activities, such as the nature of work and the organization of corporations, as well as the influences of reforms in the financial reforms. Moreover, the emergence of institutional investment in the financial markets, the process of globalization and the development of electronic commerce have the influences on the corporate governance both in Canada and in China. There is an immense magnitude of discussion on various aspects of corporate governance in the academic field. This thesis will focus on comparing two rather distinctive systems of corporate governance, with respect to three specific aspects of the corporate governance. Those are: the board of directors, the role of shareholders, the roles of banks and investors in the two countries, also the reforms in China. Moreover, the convergence of the two corporate governance systems is introduced. / Le présent mémoire vise à faire enquête sur de tels débats dans le domaine de gouvernance des sociétés pour le fait qu'il y a ou aura de changements dramatiques dans la structure des activités des sociétés, par exemple, la nature de travail et l'organisation des corporations, ainsi que les influences des réformes financières. De plus, l'émergence de l'investissement institutionnel dans Ie marché financier, la progression de globalisation et le developpement du commerce électronique ont d'influence sur gouvernance des sociétés tant au Canada qu'en Chine. II y a une magnitude immense de discussion sur les aspects variés de gouvernance des sociétés dans le domaine académique. Ce mémoire présente une étude de comparaison détaillée sur les deux systèmes différents de gouvernance des sociétés concernant trois aspects spéciaux de gouvernance des sociétés, y compris le conseil d'administration, les rôles des banques et les investisseurs dans les deux États, ainsi que les réformes en Chine, de plus, la convergence des deux systèmes de gouvernance des sociétés est introduite.

(The protection of minority shareholders' rights) The theme of this thesis is the protection of minority shareholders' rights. This problem of joint-stock companies is very comprehensive. So that this thesis is focused on rights belonging to shareholders with qualified share in stated capital of company which are situated in § 181 and § 182 in the Czech Commercial Code. The thesis consists of eight chapters. In the first chapter the comment of basic terms connecting to this topic is presented. The term of joint-stock company and its characteristic features are briefly engaged. Further the terms shareholder and minority shareholder are specified. The second chapter is focused on historical development of minority shareholders' rights from 1991 when the Commercial Code was enacted to the future. Special attention is given to amendments to the Commercial Code by Acts No. 142/1996 Coll., No. 370/2000 Coll. and No. 420/2009 Coll. In the third chapter the general comment about reasons of protection of minority shareholders' rights is given and areas of protection of these shareholders are specialized. The fourth chapter is concentrated on the right of minority shareholders to convence an extraordinary general meeting to discuss the program which is suggested. The Supreme Court of the Czech Republic has a...

Protection of minority shareholders after the recodification of Czech private law This thesis is concerned with the instruments designated for protection of minority shareholders, their reasons and aims. The thesis critically assesses Czech legislation concerning the protection of minority shareholders, with the focus on new instruments and interpretation ambiguities and having regard to the opinions of professional public. After assessing the opinions of professional public, the author presents his own view on interpretation ambiguities. The thesis is systematically divided into seven chapters. Chapter One includes general terminology definitions. Terms shareholder, Czech public limited company, minority shareholder and qualified shareholder are explained. The term of protection of minority shareholders is explained here as well. Chapter Two includes general summary of the legislation concerned with protection of minority shareholders. The chapter divided according to the individual legal areas containing the protection. It includes complex outline of minority shareholder rights, with regard to their reasons and aims. Chapter Three includes detailed view and justification of use of correspondence voting, the instrument of attendance of general meetings by technological means, and cumulative...

Le droit préférentiel de souscription est un droit individuel de l'actionnaire dont le régime d'exercice a été souligné par une actualité récente. Ce droit a été évoqué à propos des actions de préférence, des abus de majorité et des avantages particuliers. Il est expressément consacré par la loi. La comparaison du droit préférentiel de souscription dans les systèmes juridiques libanais et français a dévoilé la parenté d'origine des deux systèmes, ainsi que des failles dans le premier. Des projets de réformes sont proposés pour placer les sociétés libanaises à égalité avec leurs concurrentes étrangères qui bénéficient d'un règlement mieux adaptées à leurs exigences. Le droit préférentiel de souscription n'est pas reconnu comme un droit intangible. Notre thèse démontre, d'une part, que ce droit constitue la meilleure protection pour les actionnaires. D'autre part, elle montre que la suppression du droit préférentiel de souscription ne peut intervenir que sous la double condition d'une information suffisante des actionnaires et d'un prix d'émission d'actions nouvelles minimum. / The preferential subscription right is an individual right of shareholders which the regime of exercise has been highlighted by recent events. This right has been mentioned regarding preference shares, majority abuse and special advantages. This right is expressly dedicated by the law. The comparison of preferential subscription right in the Lebanese and French legal systems points out the historical relation between the two systems, as well as presence of faults in the first. Reform projects are suggested in order to put the Lebanese companies at the same level with her competing companies. The preferential subscription right is not recognized as an intangible right. Our thesis reveals, firstly, that this right constitutes a perfect protection for the shareholders. Secondly, it indicates that the suppression of the preferential subscription right can only occur under the double condition of sufficient information of the shareholders and an issue price of new shares.

This Master thesis deals with corporations in americam legal system. The theme is described from RMBCA point of view and then there is compared the law of state Delaware with the law of state New York. Preliminary there are described american legal business entities and their czech equivalent structure. The main part of the thesis is attened to the legal form of the corporation, the formation and incorporation, the corporate governance and the financial structure od the corporation. In each section there are relevant precedents of Delaware and New York. Conclusion of the thesis describes the New York courts system, especially explains the function of Court of Chancery.

In the last decade Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become increasingly important and multiple corporations that have been exposed for unethical behavior have been harshly penalized by the market. This study aims at evaluating wealth effects of unethical corporate behavior by doing a case study, in which an in-depth analysis is conducted on four infamous corporate scandals; Wells Fargo, HSBC, Danske Bank, and Volkswagen. Share prices are compared to an approximation of what the prices could have been, had the scandals not been revealed, to give an indication on abnormal returns around the announcement of the corporate scandals. The approximation is based on the share’s previous correlation with market returns. Results of the study are then contrasted to and analyzed with regard to findings of previously conducted event studies on the wealth loss suffered due to exposed unethical behavior. It is found that the corporate scandals resulted in substantial direct wealth losses in terms of market cap value and shareholder wealth for two of our cases, Wells Fargo and Volkswagen. The value decrease that Danske Bank suffered was also substantial, but had a lag in discernible market reactions in comparison to Wells Fargo and Volkswagen. HSBC has in recent years been lagging behind our price approximation, but any direct negative effect from the scandal announcement cannot be observed.

Cette thèse étudie l’impact de la composition du conseil d’administration sur la performance financière d’une entreprise. Elle est composée de trois chapitres. Dans le premier chapitre, nous effectuons une revue de la littérature sur les conseils d’administration. Nous pointons l’évolution de la gouvernance des entreprises au cours des dernières décennies, et montrons en quoi l’efficacité des conseils d’administration est devenue un sujet majeur de ce champ de recherche et une préoccupation importante des actionnaires et des régulateurs. En particulier, après avoir présenté le cadre théorique de la gouvernance, nous présentons les résultats des articles académiques étudiant l’impact de la composition du conseil d’administration sur la performance de l’entreprise. Dans les deuxième et troisième chapitres, nous étudions l’impact de la présence de différents types d’administrateurs au sein du conseil. Dans le deuxième chapitre, nous proposons un modèle théorique pour tenter de comprendre et de déterminer l’impact de la représentation salariale au conseil d’administration sur la valeur actionnariale de l’entreprise et sur l’horizon de ses investissements. Nos résultats suggèrent que la représentation salariale peut s’envisager comme un choix, pour les actionnaires, entre liquidité et information. Nous montrons que lorsque des représentants des salariés siègent au conseil d’administration d’une entreprise, celle-ci a une plus grande probabilité d’investir dans des projets à long-terme qu’une entreprise sans représentation salariale. Nous montrons également que les salariés ayant accès à une information interne précieuse, leur présence au conseil d’administration peut permettre d’augmenter la valeur actionnariale de l’entreprise. Ainsi, nous proposons un modèle de la représentation salariale cohérent avec certaines études empiriques. Dans le troisième chapitre, nous étudions empiriquement l’impact des connexions politiques sur le taux d’intérêt d’emprunts bancaires en utilisant un échantillon de prêts concernant des entreprises de plusieurs pays. Si ce sujet a déjà été largement traité, nous proposons une nouvelle définition de la connexion politique que nous subdivisons en deux catégories, selon l’exposition médiatique, forte ou faible, des politiciens. Les politiciens les plus en vue sont aussi ceux pour lesquels le risque d’être soupçonné de conflit d’intérêt ou de manquement à l’éthique est le plus important, et pour qui le coût d’un scandale est le plus élevé. Aussi discriminons-nous les connexions politiques selon qu’elles impliquent des politiciens très en vue ou des politiciens à un niveau inférieur. Cette division se fonde sur l’hypothèse que les politiciens les plus exposés sont, ayant le plus à perdre d’un scandale, disposent de la marge de manœuvre la plus réduite en tant que dirigeants d’entreprise et sont donc les moins à même d’impacter la performance de l’entreprise. Nos résultats confortent la pertinence d’une telle redéfinition de la connexion politique en fonction de la visibilité des politiciens concernés. Nous montrons en particulier que les entreprises politiquement connectées qui empruntent auprès de banques politiquement connectées le font à des taux significativement inférieurs à celles non connectées, et que cet effet est plus important lorsque la connexion de l’emprunteur passe par un politicien moins exposé. Nos résultats suggèrent que l’effet est encore plus fort si la banque est elle aussi connectée par l’intermédiaire d’un politicien moins exposé. Par ailleurs, nous montrons que les entreprises connectées politiquement empruntent significativement moins auprès de banques connectées par l’intermédiaire d’un politicien très exposé médiatiquement. Nos résultats suggèrent enfin que cet effet est plus fort à l’approche d’élections, un moment il est particulièrement coûteux pour un politicien d’être soupçonné de manquement à la déontologie. / This thesis studies the impact of the composition of the board of directors on the firm financial performance. It consists of three chapters. In the first chapter, we review the literature on boards of directors. We show the evolution of corporate governance over the past decades, and how the efficiency of boards of directors has became a key issue for shareholders and regulators. After describing the theoretical and historical framework, we present and discuss the academic papers studying the impact of board composition on the firm performance. In the second and third chapters, we examine the impact of the presence of different directors on the board. In the second chapter, we provide a theoretical model that aims at understanding and determining the impact of employee representation on the board of directors on the shareholder value of the firm and on its investment horizon. Our results suggest that with employee representation, shareholders face a tradeoff between liquidity and information. We show that a firm with employee representation is more likely to invest in long-term rather than in short-term projects and that, because employees have access to valuable inside information, their presence on the board may increase the shareholder value. Consistent with some empirical studies, we offer some theoretical support for employee representation on the board. In the third chapter, we study the impact of political connections on the rate of interest of bank loans. We conduct a cross-country study of the impact of political connections on bank loans interest rates. While this topic has already been widely investigated, we offer a new definition of political connection. We subcategorize political connections into two categories: politicians with a high media exposure, and lower level politicians. Politicians with business ties bear the risk of being suspected of ethics breaching or of having conflicting interests, which can be costly for their reputation. We discriminate the political connections of firms based on the idea that with greater exposure comes greater risk of suspicion, and thus smaller ability to impact the firm performance. We study the impact of political connection of the borrower as well as of the lender on interest rates. Our results give support to our definition, as we find significant differences depending on the level of visibility of the political connections of the borrower and of the lender. Our results show that politically connected firms which borrow from politically connected banks enjoy a significantly lower rate if they are connected with lower level politicians. Our results suggest that the rate is even lower if the bank also is connected with lower level politicians. Furthermore, our results suggest that politically connected firms tend to avoid borrowing money from banks that are connected with top politicians. Our results also suggest that this effect is stronger in pre-election periods, when the potential cost for politicians of being suspected of collusion is higher.

Nos últimos anos, o mercado de capitais brasileiro tem experimentado um crescimento da participação do investidor minoritário concomitantemente ao do volume de negociação de ações. Este trabalho propõe-se a avaliar se o perfil dos acionistas controladores de uma empresa pode implicar em um percentual diferente do seu lucro que é distribuído como dividendos para seus acionistas. Para a realização desse trabalho, por meio da utilização da base de dados da Economática®, foram selecionadas as empresas cujas ações apresentaram maior volume de negociação entre os anos de 2001 e 2006, Os resultados obtidos por meio do modelo de mínimos quadrados ordinários mostraram que empresas cujos maiores acionistas faziam parte do conselho de administração distribuíram como dividendos, um percentual maior do lucro para seus acionistas. Entretanto, em contrário, empresas onde o governo foi classificado como acionista controlador, foi distribuído um percentual menor. Os resultados também corroboram a afirmação de que as empresas consideradas como grandes, distribuem mais dividendos do que as pequenas. Além disso, empresas com uma estrutura de propriedade mais concentrada distribuíram um percentual menor do lucro, como dividendos para seus acionistas, do que aquelas com estrutura menos concentrada. / In the last few years, the Brazilian capital market has experienced growth in the participation of the minority investor as well as in the volume of trade of stocks. This study intends to analyze if the profile of the controlling shareholders of a company can imply on a different percentual of profit being distributed as dividends to its shareholders. This work was carried out by selecting companies whose stocks were among the most tradable between the years of 2001 and 2006, by means of the use of the database Economática®.The results obtained by using the Ordinary Least Square Model have demonstrated that companies whose the largest stockholders were part of the management board have distributed as dividends, a larger percentual of their profit to their stockholders. However, on the other side, companies with the government as their largest shareholders have distributed a smaller percentual of it. The results also corroborated the statement that companies considered to be large have distributed more dividends than the small ones. Besides, companies with a more concentrated ownership structured have distributed a smaller percentual of the profit as dividends to their shareholders than those with a less concentrated structure.