The Corporate Governance Movement, Banks, and the Financial Crisis
-
Brian R. Cheffins
Abstract
This Article discusses why a “corporate governance movement” that commenced in the United States in the 1970s became an entrenched feature of American capitalism and describes how the chronology differed in a potentially crucial way for banks. The Article explains corporate governance’s emergence and staying power by reference to changing market conditions and a deregulation trend that provided executives with unprecedented managerial discretion as the twentieth century drew to a close. With banking the historical pattern paralleled general trends in large measure. Still, while the “imperial” CEO who achieved prominence in the 1980s became outmoded for the most part after corporate scandals at the start of the 2000s, this was not the case with large financial companies. The continued boldness of “star” CEOs in the financial services industry plausibly contributed to the market turmoil of 2008, but the financial crisis emphatically ended the corporate governance “free pass” banks had enjoyed.
© 2015 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- The Corporate Governance Movement, Banks, and the Financial Crisis
- A State of Inaction: Regulatory Preferences, Rent, and Income Inequality
- Officers’ and Directors’ Liability Under German Law — A Potemkin Village
- Dividend Policy with Controlling Shareholders
- The Impact of the Financial Crisis on Nonfinancial Firms: The Case of Brazilian Corporations and the “Double Circularity” Problem in Transnational Securities Litigation
- Corporate Fiduciary Duties and Prudential Regulation of Financial Institutions
- Quack Corporate Governance, Round III? Bank Board Regulation Under the New European Capital Requirement Directive
- Brave New World: A Proposal for Institutional Investors
- The Vickrey-Clarke-Groves “Pivotal Mechanism” as an Alternative to Voting for Organizational Control
- Self-Selection and Heterogeneity in Firms’ Choice of Corporate Law
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- The Corporate Governance Movement, Banks, and the Financial Crisis
- A State of Inaction: Regulatory Preferences, Rent, and Income Inequality
- Officers’ and Directors’ Liability Under German Law — A Potemkin Village
- Dividend Policy with Controlling Shareholders
- The Impact of the Financial Crisis on Nonfinancial Firms: The Case of Brazilian Corporations and the “Double Circularity” Problem in Transnational Securities Litigation
- Corporate Fiduciary Duties and Prudential Regulation of Financial Institutions
- Quack Corporate Governance, Round III? Bank Board Regulation Under the New European Capital Requirement Directive
- Brave New World: A Proposal for Institutional Investors
- The Vickrey-Clarke-Groves “Pivotal Mechanism” as an Alternative to Voting for Organizational Control
- Self-Selection and Heterogeneity in Firms’ Choice of Corporate Law
