Who should be allowed to call the shots in the boardrooms of U. S. Corporations? And what difference does it make for their growth and profitability? In the last decade, these issues have moved to the center of policy debates about the time horizons and competitiveness of U.S. companies. This book is an indispensable guide through the historical, legal, and institutional background for these corporate governance debates. It explains three broad views on the relationship among the governance, performance, and competitiveness of corporations, and examines the intellectual history, politics, and empirical evidence behind each argument. It also considers the effect that two trends will have on corporate governance: the growth and power of public employees' pension funds and the increase in the economic activity that comes from specialized services and customized production. Blair asserts that companies need to experiment with different governance arrangements, such as choosing directors to represent particular constituencies, or making more radical arrangements like leveraged buyouts or worker-owned companies. Public policy should encourage, or at least not impede, such experimentation.

“Mine” is one of the first words babies learn, and by the time we grow up, the idea of ownership seems natural, whether we are buying a cup of coffee or a house. But who controls the space behind your airplane seat: you, reclining, or the squished laptop user behind you? Why is plagiarism wrong, but it’s okay to knock off a recipe or a dress design? And after a snowstorm, why does a chair in the street hold your parking space in Chicago, while in New York you lose both the space and the chair? In Mine!, Michael Heller and James Salzman, two of the world’s leading authorities on ownership, explain these puzzles and many more. Remarkably, they reveal, there are just six simple rules that everyone uses to claim everything. Owners choose the rule that steers us to do what they want. But we can pick differently. This is true not just for airplane seats, but also for battles over digital privacy, climate change, and wealth inequality. Mine! draws on mind-bending, often infuriating, and always fascinating accounts from business, history, courtrooms, and everyday life to reveal how the rules of ownership control our lives and shape our world.

The governance of companies is of importance to developing countries due to the link between effective corporate governance and economic development. Ownership and control of public companies, except in the US and UK, is often in the hands of a few individuals, families or corporate groups and impact on corporate governance and economic development.Using Sri Lanka as an illustrative example, Corporate Ownership and Control sets out the implications of corporate ownership and control structures on the governance of companies, and suggests a reform agenda to meet the challenges posed by such structures. Any analysis into the reform of corporate governance in developing countries should begin with a focus on the local market structures that define its adaptation and effectiveness. The issues explored in the book provide an insight into ownership and control structures in Sri Lanka, the costs and benefits of such structures, and the necessary reform framework to promote effective corporate governance. The analysis can be used to both understand the impact of ownership structures on corporate governance, and suggest how corporate governance issues arising from such structures should be resolved in order to promote economic development and growth.

Much discussion on corporate governance assumes companies are owned and controlled separately, yet this is not the norm worldwide. This book explores the foundations of separation in UK companies, asking how the company came to prominence and why and how the UK stock market came to be dominated by institutional shareholders.

This is a study of Malaysia’s new political economy, with a focus on ownership and control of the corporate sector. It offers a pioneering assessment of government-linked investment companies (GLICs), a type of state-owned institution that has long prevailed in the corporate sector but has not been analysed. Malaysia’s history of government-business ties is unique, while the nature of the nexuses between the state and the corporate sector has undergone major transitions. Corporate power has shifted from the hands of foreign firms to the state to the ruling party, and well-connected businessmen, and back to the state. Corporate wealth is now heavily situated in the leading publicly-listed government-linked companies (GLCs), controlled through block shareholdings by a mere seven GLICs under the jurisdiction of the Minister of Finance. To indicate why these GLICs are important actors in Corporate Malaysia, this study provides a deep assessment of their ownership and control of Bursa Malaysia’s top 100 publicly-listed enterprises.

For many Americans, capitalism is a dynamic engine of prosperity that rewards the bold, the daring, and the hardworking. But to many outside the United States, capitalism seems like an initiative that serves only to concentrate power and wealth in the hands of a few hereditary oligarchies. As A History of Corporate Governance around the World shows, neither conception is wrong. In this volume, some of the brightest minds in the field of economics present new empirical research that suggests that each side of the debate has something to offer the other. Free enterprise and well-developed financial systems are proven to produce growth in those countries that have them. But research also suggests that in some other capitalist countries, arrangements truly do concentrate corporate ownership in the hands of a few wealthy families. A History of Corporate Governance around the World provides historical studies of the patterns of corporate governance in several countries-including the large industrial economies of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States; larger developing economies like China and India; and alternative models like those of the Netherlands and Sweden.