Financial crisis and corporate governance in the financial sector: Regulatory changes and financial assistance in Germany and Europe

Abstract

The recent financial crisis has led to a loss of trust in the quality of corporate governance and the balance of the European financial market. These issues have also affected Germany. In Germany, financial companies’ compliance with the German Corporate Governance Code represents a basic standard for ‘good’ corporate governance. We find that cooperation between management boards and supervisory boards, as well as monitoring by supervisory boards, must be improved. Improvement is also necessary for corporate governance reporting and the implementation of the ‘pay for performance’ principle. Our analysis supports the critical remarks by the European Commission (EC) in its current Corporate Governance Green Papers for the financial sector regarding the limited ability of the present corporate governance reporting to support stakeholders’ decision making. Among other reforms, the EC intends to professionalize supervisory board members, reduce conflicts of interest by limiting multiple mandates of board members, and increase the significance of corporate governance reporting by supervision of the reports.