The paper investigates the impact of corporate governance on the performance of 361 German corporations over the time period 1991 to 1996. We find ownership concentration to affect profitability significantly negatively. Representation of owners on the board of executive directors does not make...

Strong lending relationships between banks and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play a key role in the bank-based financial system of Germany. So far, they have been mainly described by the notion of a housebank and transactional features of long-term bank-customer relationships. In...