B. The Ownership Structure of German Firms, Banks, and Monitoring
In addition to codetermination, there are other features of the German governance system that differ from the Anglo-American system and which play roles in our analysis. These features are of independent interest. One such important feature is the widespread presence of block shareholders. In stock market-based economies, outside block shareholders are often viewed as monitors of firms’ managers (see, e.g., Shleifer and Vishny, 1986; Kahn and Winton, 1998; and Maug, 1998). But, the empirical evidence for this in the United States is mixed, e.g., Demsetz and Lehn (1985), Mikkelson and Ruback (1985), and Holderness and Sheehan (1988). In Germany, block share holding is much more pervasive compared to the stock market-based economies of the United States or the United Kingdom. The samples in Gorton and Schmid (2000) display the importance of block holders: 65 (162) out of 82 (283) firms in their small (large) 1975 sample have block holders holding at least 25%; for their small (large) 1986 sample it is 40 (171) out of 56 (280). Also, Franks and Mayer (1994) study a sample of 171 German companies during the late 1980s and find that in 85% of these companies there is a single shareholder that holds at least 25%. Edwards and Fischer (1994) report that: “The vast majority of German AGs have a single shareholder who owns 25 percent or more of the voting capital” (p. 194).