The question of whether the CEO should also serve as chairman of the board continues to be a controversial issue in corporate governance. While "agency cost" arguments would lead one to advocate separation of the top decision-making and control functions, there are efficiency and coordination arguments for vesting the powers of the CEO and chair in the same person. And helping to keep the controversy alive, the empirical evidence on U.S. companies is inconclusive, with no clear loss of value associated with having combined CEO/chairmen. Copyright (c) 2008 Morgan Stanley..
Die derzeitige Diskussion über die Vor- und Nachteile von Doppelmandaten ist aus betriebswirtschaftlicher Sicht eindimensional. Wenn die Mandatsstruktur der obersten Führungsebene im Kontext mehrerer Kontrollmechanismen betrachtet wird, zeigt sich bei schweizerischen Gesellschaften kein eindeutiger Effekt von Doppelmandaten.
Immer wieder wurde in letzter Zeit darüber diskutiert, ob Konglomerate im Finanzsektor Wert schaffen oder vernichten. In der Schweiz stehen dabei die Grossbanken UBS und CS im Fokus, die Investment Banking sowie Asset- und Wealth-Management unter einem Dach vereinen. Die Autoren dieses Beitrags ermittelten in einer Studie einen Bewertungsabschlag von rund 24% für Finanzkonglomerate in den USA.
This paper investigates whether geographic diversification is value-enhancing or value-destroying in the financial services sector, broadly defined. Our dataset comprises approximately 3,579 observations over the period from 1985 to 2004 and covers the entire range of U.S. financial intermediaries - commercial banks, investment banks, insurance companies, asset managers, and financial infrastructure services firms. We use two alternative measures of geographic diversification: (1) a dummy variable whether the firm reports more than one geographic segment and (2) the percentage of sales from non-domestic operations. Our results indicate that geographic diversification is not associated with a significant valuation discount in financial intermediaries. However, when accounting for the firms' main activity-areas, we find evidence of a significant discount associated with geographic diversification in securities firms and a premium in credit intermediaries and insurance companies. All these results are robust after taking into account functional diversification of the firms as well as a potential endogeneity of both functional and geographic diversification.
Economies of scope in financial intermediation continue as a focal point in strategic and regulatory debates. In this paper, we summarize the theoretical research on the value of diversification in financial services firms, and survey the empirical research so far on the conglomerate discount in US and international financial services businesses. We also review research on the internal capital market efficiency in universal banks and financial conglomerates. The paper provides new empirical evidence on the conglomerate discount in US financial intermediaries and how that changes between non-crisis and crisis periods, showing a decline in the discount under turbulent conditions.
This paper investigates whether functional diversification is value-enhancing or value-destroying in the financial services sector, broadly defined. Based on a U.S. dataset comprising approximately 4,060 observations covering the period 1985-2004, we report a substantial and persistent conglomerate discount among financial intermediaries. Our results suggest that it is diversification that causes the discount, and not that troubled firms diversify into other more promising areas. In addition, the discount applies to all financial services activity-areas with the exception of investment banking and is stable over different combinations of financial activity-areas with the exception of commercial banking units combined with insurance companies and/or investment banking activities.
