IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/2265.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Italian Chamber of Lords Sits on Listed Company Boards: An Empirical Analysis of Italian Listed Company Boards from 1998 to 2006

Author

Listed:
  • Santella, Paolo
  • Drago, Carlo
  • Polo, Andrea

Abstract

The purpose of the present paper is to contribute to the literature on country interlocks by illustrating and analysing the interlocking directorships in the Italian listed companies from 1998 to 2006. We find that over the entire period a high percentage of the Italian listed companies are connected with each other through a very small minority of directors. Such group of interlocking (overwhelmingly male) directors shows a remarkable stability over time with very few entrants and very few exits mainly related to the passing away of the director. We define them for brevity the Lords of the Italian stockmarket. Lords tend to belong to families of directors, with the first five families having more than 100 directorships in nine years. The highest level of connectivity concerns those companies that belong to the MIB 30/S&P-MIB 40 index, the Italian Blue Chips. In particular, practically all the financial Blue Chips are connected with each other through a web of directors continuously from 1998 to 2006. The extent, depth, and stability of the connections among the Italian listed companies, and in particular the main Italian financial companies, raise doubts on the extent of their competitive behaviour.

Suggested Citation

  • Santella, Paolo & Drago, Carlo & Polo, Andrea, 2007. "The Italian Chamber of Lords Sits on Listed Company Boards: An Empirical Analysis of Italian Listed Company Boards from 1998 to 2006," MPRA Paper 2265, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:2265
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/2265/1/MPRA_paper_2265.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Eliezer M. Fich & Anil Shivdasani, 2006. "Are Busy Boards Effective Monitors?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(2), pages 689-724, April.
    2. Hermalin, Benjamin E & Weisbach, Michael S, 1998. "Endogenously Chosen Boards of Directors and Their Monitoring of the CEO," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(1), pages 96-118, March.
    3. Cotter, James F. & Shivdasani, Anil & Zenner, Marc, 1997. "Do independent directors enhance target shareholder wealth during tender offers?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 195-218, February.
    4. Demsetz, Harold, 1983. "The Structure of Ownership and the Theory of the Firm," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(2), pages 375-390, June.
    5. R. Luce & Albert Perry, 1949. "A method of matrix analysis of group structure," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 14(2), pages 95-116, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gualdani, Cristina, 2018. "An Econometric Model of Network Formation with an Application to Board Interlocks between Firms," TSE Working Papers 17-898, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Jul 2019.
    2. Drago, Carlo & Millo, Francesco & Ricciuti, Roberto & Santella, Paolo, 2015. "Corporate governance reforms, interlocking directorship and company performance in Italy," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 38-49.
    3. Carlo Drago & Roberto Ricciuti & Paolo Santella, 2015. "An Attempt to Disperse the Italian Interlocking Directorship Network: Analyzing the Effects of the 2011 Reform," Working Papers 2015.82, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    4. Marco Caiffa & Vincenzo Farina & Lucrezia Fattobene, 2021. "CEO Duality: Newspapers and Stock Market Reactions," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 14(1), pages 1-18, January.
    5. Lucia Bellenzier & Rosanna Grassi, 2014. "Interlocking directorates in Italy: persistent links in network dynamics," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 9(2), pages 183-202, October.
    6. Ottorino Morresi & Alessia Naccarato, 2016. "Are Family Firms Different in Choosing and Adjusting Their Capital Structure? An Empirical Analysis through the Lens of Agency Theory," International Journal of Economics and Finance, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 8(7), pages 216-216, July.
    7. Maria Rosa Battaggion & Vittoria Cerasi, 2018. "Endogenous interlocking directorates," Working Papers 380, University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics, revised 01 May 2018.
    8. Marco Caiffa & Vincenzo Farina & Lucrezia Fattobene, 2020. "All that glitters is not gold: CEOs' celebrity beyond media content," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(3), pages 444-460, July.
    9. Ettore Croci & Rosanna Grassi, 2014. "The economic effect of interlocking directorates in Italy: new evidence using centrality measures," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 20(1), pages 89-112, March.
    10. Carlos Drago & Francesco Millo & Roberto Ricciuti & Paolo Santella, 2011. "Corporate Governance Reforms, Interlocking Directorship Networks and Company Value in Italy (1998-2007)," CESifo Working Paper Series 3322, CESifo.
    11. Carlo Drago & Roberto Ricciuti, 2019. "Bootstrapping the Gini Index of the Network Degree: An Application for Italian Corporate Governance," Working Papers 05/2019, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    12. Carlo Drago & Livia Amidani Aliberti & Davide Carbonai, 2014. "Measuring Gender Differences in Information Sharing Using Network Analysis: the Case of the Austrian Interlocking Directorship Network in 2009," Working Papers 2014.61, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    13. Lucrezia Fattobene & Marco Caiffa & Emiliano Di Carlo, 2018. "Interlocking directorship across Italian listed companies: evidence from a natural experiment," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 22(2), pages 393-425, June.
    14. Carlo Drago & Francesco Millo & Roberto Ricciuti & Paolo Satella, 2011. "The Role of Women in the Italian Network of Boards of Directors, 2003-2010," Working Papers 10/2011, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    15. Maria Rosaria Carillo & Vincenzo Lombardo & Alberto Zazzaro, 2013. "Family Firm Connections and Entrepreneurial Human Capital in the Process of Development," Mo.Fi.R. Working Papers 89, Money and Finance Research group (Mo.Fi.R.) - Univ. Politecnica Marche - Dept. Economic and Social Sciences.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Crespí-Cladera, Rafel & Pascual-Fuster, Bartolomé, 2014. "Does the independence of independent directors matter?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 116-134.
    2. Benson, Bradley W. & Chen, Yu & James, Hui L. & Park, Jung Chul, 2020. "So far away from me: Firm location and the managerial ownership effect on firm value," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    3. Nguyen, Bang Dang & Nielsen, Kasper Meisner, 2010. "The value of independent directors: Evidence from sudden deaths," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(3), pages 550-567, December.
    4. Roberto Wessels & Tom J. Wansbeek & Lammertjan Dam, 2016. "What is the Relation (if any) Between a Firm's Corporate Governance Arrangements and its Financial Performance?," Multinational Finance Journal, Multinational Finance Journal, vol. 20(4), pages 323-354, December.
    5. Bhagat, Sanjai & Bolton, Brian, 2008. "Corporate governance and firm performance," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 257-273, June.
    6. Balsmeier, Benjamin & Buchwald, Achim & Stiebale, Joel, 2014. "Outside directors on the board and innovative firm performance," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(10), pages 1800-1815.
    7. Bradley W. Benson & Wallace N. Davidson III & Hongxia Wang & Dan L. Worrell, 2011. "Deviations from Expected Stakeholder Management, Firm Value, and Corporate Governance," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 40(1), pages 39-81, March.
    8. Jean-Christophe Duhamel & Réda Sefsaf, 2017. "Valeur de la gouvernance d'entreprise et gouvernance des valeurs de l'entreprise. Recherche sur les effets des codes de gouvernance et les stratégies de communication en matière de gouvernance," Working Papers halshs-01633982, HAL.
    9. ØYvind Bøhren & R. Øystein Strøm, 2010. "Governance and Politics: Regulating Independence and Diversity in the Board Room," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(9‐10), pages 1281-1308, November.
    10. Hwang, Byoung-Hyoun & Kim, Seoyoung, 2009. "It pays to have friends," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 138-158, July.
    11. Goergen, Marc & Manjon, Miguel C. & Renneboog, Luc, 2008. "Recent developments in German corporate governance," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 175-193, September.
    12. Lauren Cohen & Andrea Frazzini & Christopher J. Malloy, 2012. "Hiring Cheerleaders: Board Appointments of "Independent" Directors," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(6), pages 1039-1058, June.
    13. Sterling Huang & Gilles Hilary, 2018. "Zombie Board: Board Tenure and Firm Performance," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(4), pages 1285-1329, September.
    14. Neupane, Biwesh & Thapa, Chandra & Marshall, Andrew & Neupane, Suman & Shrestha, Chaman, 2024. "Do foreign institutional investors improve board monitoring?," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    15. Ferris, Stephen P. & Yan, Xuemin (Sterling), 2007. "Do independent directors and chairmen matter? The role of boards of directors in mutual fund governance," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 13(2-3), pages 392-420, June.
    16. Tanja Artiga González & Markus Schmid & David Yermack, 2019. "Does Price Fixing Benefit Corporate Managers?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(10), pages 4813-4840, October.
    17. Neeraj Gupta & Jitendra Mahakud, 2020. "CEO characteristics and bank performance: evidence from India," Managerial Auditing Journal, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 35(8), pages 1057-1093, August.
    18. Sofia Larmou & Nikos Vafeas, 2010. "The relation between board size and firm performance in firms with a history of poor operating performance," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 14(1), pages 61-85, February.
    19. Quoc-Anh Do & Bang Dang Nguyen & Raghavendra- University of Cambridge, Cambridge Judge Business School) Rau, 2013. "Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice: What Are Good Directors Made of?," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03460924, HAL.
    20. Huang, Qianqian & Jiang, Feng & Lie, Erik & Yang, Ke, 2014. "The role of investment banker directors in M&A," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 112(2), pages 269-286.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    corporate governance; interlocking directorships; board turnover; antitrust; competition; social network analysis (SNA); exploratory data analysis (EDA); empirical corporate finance;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C0 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - General
    • G3 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance
    • M2 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Economics
    • L1 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance
    • L4 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:2265. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.