Mit der Veröffentlichung des zweiten Konsultationspapiers «New Basel Capital Accord» im Januar 2001 ist auch bei den Schweizer Banken das moderne Kreditrisikomanagement wieder vermehrt in den Mittelpunkt des Interesses gerückt. Die neuen Vorschläge des Basler Ausschusses für Bankenaufsicht folgen der Zielsetzung, das Management der Kreditrisiken bei Finanzinstituten nachhaltig zu professionalisieren und die entsprechenden Eigenmittelvorschriften flexibler und risikogerechter zu gestalten. Allgemein fordert der neue Basler Accord nach dem «Internal Ratings-based Approach» (IRB) umfassende Massnahmen im gesamten Kreditvergabeprozess.
This paper investigates whether the valuation effect of corporate governance depends on the degree of competition in the companies' product markets in a large international sample covering 14 countries from the European Union (EU). Besides providing external validity of previous U.S.-centered studies, this paper uses more comprehensive and reliable measures of both product market competition and corporate governance. Consistent with the hypothesis that product market competition acts as a substitute for corporate governance as competitive pressure imposes discipline on managers to maximize firm value, our results show that corporate governance significantly increases firm value in non-competitive industries only. When investigating the channels through which firm value may be increased, we find that good governance for firms in non-competitive industries leads them to have more capital expenditures, spend less on acquisitions and be less likely to diversify. Our results are robust to a large number of robustness checks including the use of alternative measures of competition and governance, as well as using alternative regression specifications.
