Director interlocks and executive turnover in German public corporations : a hazard analysis for the period from 1996 to 2008

We investigate executive turnovers with focus on different kinds of outside board memberships of supervisory board members. The analysis is based on all management board members of the largest German corporations during the period from 1996 to 2008. Cox proportional hazard estimations suggest that companies send their executives to supervisory boards of other firms to actively monitor their capital stakes. External executives that do not represent capital stakes enhance only the monitoring intensity of the CEO. The total number of external supervisory board mandates of all shareholder representatives seems to enhance corporate governance pointing to a functioning market for scarce top-monitoring-directors.