Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T07:53:27.410Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Is Berle and Means Really a Myth?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 April 2011

Brian Cheffins  and
Steven Bank
Brian Cheffins
Affiliation:
Professor of Corporate Law at the Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge
Steven Bank
Affiliation:
Professor of law at the School of Law, University of California, Los Angeles
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means famously declared in 1932 that a separation of ownership and control was a hallmark of large U.S. corporations, and their characterization of matters quickly became received wisdom. A series of recent papers has called the Berle–Means orthodoxy into question. This survey of the relevant historical literature acknowledges that the pattern of ownership and control in U.S. public companies is not monolithic. Nevertheless, a separation between ownership and control remains an appropriate reference point for analysis of U.S. corporate governance.

Type
Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 83 , Issue 3 , Autumn 2009 , pp. 443 - 474
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Berle, Adolf A. and Means, Gardiner C., The Modern Corporation and Private Property (New Brunswick, N.J., 1997; first published 1932), 110–11.Google Scholar

2 Hawley, James P. and Williams, Andrew T., The Rise of Fiduciary Capitalism: How In-stitutional Investors Can Make Corporate America More Democratic (Philadelphia, 2000), 42.Google Scholar See also Bratton, William W., “Berle and Means Reconsidered at the Century's Turn”, Journal of Corporation Law 26 (2001): 737Google Scholar.

3 Monks, Robert A. G. and Minow, Nell, Corporate Governance, 4th ed. (Hoboken, N.J., 2008), 110.Google Scholar

4 Ibid., 94.

5 Gilson, Ronald J., “Corporate Governance and Economic Efficiency: When Do Institu-tions Matter?” Washington University Law Quarterly 74 (1996): 327, 331.Google Scholar See also , Bratton, “Berle and Means”, 754Google Scholar; Dent, George W., “Toward Unifying Ownership and Control in the Public Corporation”, Wisconsin Law Review (1990): 881Google Scholar.

6 Hannah, Leslie, “The Divorce of Ownership from Control from 1900: Re-calibrating Imagined Global Historical Trends”, Business History 49 (2007): 404, 423.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Santos, João A. C. and Rumble, Adrienne S., “The American Keiretsu and Universal Banks: Investing, Voting and Sitting on Nonfinancials' Corporate Boards”, Journal of Finan-cial Economics 80 (2006): 419, 436.Google Scholar

8 Holderness, Clifford G., “The Myth of Diffuse Ownership in the United States”, Review of Financial Studies 22 (2008): 1377, 1379.Google Scholar

9 Nineteenth-century evidence is extremely patchy. For an exception, see Hilt, Eric, “When Did Ownership Separate from Control? Corporate Governance in the Early Nineteenth Cen-tury”, Journal of Economic History 68 (2008): 645CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 , Holderness, “Myth of Diffuse Ownership”, 1402.Google Scholar

11 Werner, Walter, “Corporation Law in Search of its Future”, Columbia Law Review 81 (1981): 1611, 1641–42;CrossRefGoogle ScholarHorwitz, Morton J., The Transformation of American Law, 1870–1960: The Crisis of Legal Orthodoxy (Oxford, 1992), 93–97;Google ScholarRoy, William G., Socializing Capital: The Rise of the Large Industrial Corporation in America (Princeton, N.J., 1997), 3, 17–18Google Scholar.

12 Chandler, Alfred D. Jr., “The United States: Seedbed of Managerial Capitalism”, in Managerial Hierarchies: Comparative Perspectives on the Rise of the Modern Industrial Enterprise, ed. Chandler, Alfred D. and Daems, Herman (Cambridge, Mass., 1980), 9Google Scholar; Chandler, Alfred D. Jr., Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism (Cambridge, Mass., 1990), 52, 84–85Google Scholar.

13 , Hannah, “Divorce of Ownership”, 425.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., 421.

15 Ibid., 415.

16 Ibid., 406.

17 For similar criticism of empirical work purporting to show that the United States had underdeveloped financial markets in global terms as of 1913, see Sylla, Richard, “Schumpeter Redux: A Review of Raghuram G. Rajan and Luigi Zingales's Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists”, Journal of Economic Literature 44 (2006): 391, 401CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 On the NYSE's approach compared with London's, see Davis, Lance E. and Gallman, Robert E., Evolving Financial Markets and International Capital Flows: Britain, the Ameri-cas, and Australia, 1865–1914 (Cambridge, U.K., 2001), 328, 341CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Michie, Ranald C., “The London and New York Stock Exchanges, 1850–1914”, Journal of Economic History 46 (1986): 171, 185CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Coffee, John C. Jr., “The Rise of Dispersed Ownership: The Roles of Law and the State in the Separation of Ownership and Control”, Yale Law Journal 111 (2001): 1, 34–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 O'sullivan, Mary, “The Expansion of the U.S. Stock Market: Historical Facts and Theo-retical Fashions”, Enterprise & Society 8 (2007): 489, 497, 500, 504, 523.Google Scholar

20 Ibid.

21 , Hannah, “Divorce of Ownership”, 410, 421.Google Scholar

22 Ibid., 411.

23 “The Ownership of Railroads”, New York Times, 16 Apr. 1902, 8.Google Scholar

24 Herman, Edward S., Corporate Control, Corporate Power (Cambridge, Mass., 1981).Google Scholar

25 Dunlavy, Colleen, “From Citizens to Plutocrats: Nineteenth-Century Shareholder Voting Rights and Theories of the Corporation”, in Constructing Corporate America: History, Poli-tics, Culture, ed. Lipartito, Kenneth and Sicilia, David B. (Oxford, 2004), 66, 79–84.Google Scholar

26 , Herman, Corporate Control, 67.Google Scholar

27 , Hannah, “Divorce of Ownership”, 421.Google Scholar

28 Cheffins, Brian R., Corporate Ownership and Control: British Business Transformed (Oxford, 2008), ch. 7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 , Herman, Corporate Control, appendix B.Google Scholar

30 , Hannah, “Divorce of Ownership”, 422.Google Scholar

31 “Two Million Partners Own the Corporations”, New York Times, 4 Oct. 1908, SM1.Google Scholar

32 Lippmann, Walter, Drift and Mastery: An Attempt to Diagnose the Current Unrest (1914; republished Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1961), 38.Google Scholar

33 Ibid., 43.

34 Cheffins, Brian R., “Mergers and Corporate Ownership Structure: The United States and Germany at the Turn of the Twentieth Century”, American Journal of Comparative Law 51 (2003): 473, 475–83;CrossRefGoogle ScholarMitchell, Lawrence E., The Speculation Economy: How Finance Tri-umphed Over Industry (San Francisco, 2007), 12–13Google Scholar.

35 Becht, Marco and Long, Bradford de, “Why Has There Been so Little Blockholding in America?” in A History of Corporate Governance Around the World: Family Business Groups to Professional Managers, ed. Morck, Randall K. (Chicago, 2005), 613, 646–48.Google Scholar The list of manufacturing companies, thirty-four in all, was drawn from the Temporary National Economic Committee study summarized in Appendix 1.

36 “What ‘Small Buyers’ Mean to Wall Street”, New York Times, 9 May 1909, SM2.Google Scholar

37 , Mitchell, Speculation Economy, 202–3,Google Scholar citing documents on file in the National Civic Federation Archives, New York Public Library.

38 Warshow, H. T., “The Distribution of Corporate Ownership in the United States”, Quar-terly Journal of Economics 39 (1924): 15, 21–25,Google Scholar particularly table 2. He also provides data on a subset of the companies for 1910, 1917, and 1920.

39 Porter, Glenn, The Rise of Big Business, 1860–1920, 2nd ed. (Wheeling, III., 1992), 23–24.Google Scholar

40 , O'sullivan, “Expansion of the U.S. Stock Market”, 523.Google Scholar

41 Smith, B. Mark, Toward Rational Exuberance: The Evolution of the Modern Stock Market (New York, 2001), 64–70;Google ScholarBank, Steven A. and Cheffins, Brian R., “Tax and the Separation of Ownership and Control”, in ed., Schön, Wolfgang, Tax and Corporate Governance (Berlin, 2008), 111, 136–37Google Scholar.

42 Means, Gardiner, “The Diffusion of Stock Ownership in the United States”, Quarterly Journal of Economics 44 (1930): 561.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43 , Berle and , Means, Modern Corporation, 60.Google Scholar

44 , Means, “Diffusion of Stock Ownership”, 573–74;Google Scholar, Smith, Toward Rational Exuberance, 67Google Scholar.

45 Fraser, Steve, Wall Street: A Cultural History (New York, 2005), 340–50.Google Scholar

46 Baskin, Jonathan Barron and Miranti, Paul J. Jr., A History of Corporate Finance (Cambridge, 1997), 190.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Means estimated in his 1930 article that the number of stockholders rose from 4.4 million in 1900 to 8.6 million in 1917 to 18 million in 1928, but in so doing he made no adjustment for the fact that investors in shares often owned stock in more than one company. See , Means, “Diffusion of Stock Ownership”, 595Google Scholar; , Smith, Toward Rational Exuberance, 65Google Scholar.

47 Veblen, Thorstein, Absentee Ownership and Business Enterprise in Recent Times (New York, 1923), 59–61, 105–13, 215–16.Google Scholar Unlike Berle and Means, however, Veblen treated the banker, not the hired manager, as the central personality and did not stress the potential conflict of interest between managers and owners.

48 “The Silent Revolution in American Finance”, Magazine of Wall Street, 20 Dec. 1924, 262, 263.Google Scholar

49 Clark, Evans, “15,000,000 Americans Hold Corporation Stock”, New York Times, 22 Nov. 1925, XX5.Google Scholar

50 Ripley, William Z., Main Street and Wall Street (Boston, 1927), 131.Google Scholar

51 Stigler, George J. and Friedland, Claire, “The Literature of Economics: The Case of Berle and Means”, Journal of Law and Economics 26 (1983): 237, 241CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McCraw, Thomas K., “Berle and Means”, Reviews in American History 18 (1990): 578, 579CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52 , Stigler and , Friedland, “Literature of Economics”, 238–39;Google Scholar, McCraw, “Berle and Means”, 582, 584Google Scholar.

53 , Berle and , Means, Modern Corporation, 244.Google Scholar Despite the reference to a “controlling group of managers”, Berle and Means did not directly equate management with control. See book 2, ch. 5 (“The Legal Position of Management”), and ch. 6 (“The Legal Position of Control”). On this point, see Kenneth Lipartito and Yumiko Morii, “Rethinking the Separation of Ownership from Management in American History”, unpublished working paper, 2007.

54 Means, Gardiner C., “The Separation of Ownership and Control in American Industry”, Quarterly Journal of Economics 46 (1931): 68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

55 , Berle and , Means, Modern Corporation, 64.Google Scholar

56 Leech, Dennis, “Corporate Ownership and Control: A New Look at the Evidence of Berle and Means”, Oxford Economic Papers 39 (1987): 534, 538–39;CrossRefGoogle ScholarGadhoum, Yoser, Lang, Larry H. P., and Young, Leslie, “Who Controls US?”, European Financial Management 11 (2005): 339, 341–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 , Berle and , Means, Modern Corporation, 98–101.Google Scholar

58 Ibid., 90–97.

59 Gordon, Robert A., “Ownership by Management and Control Groups in the Large Corporation”, Quarterly Journal of Economics 52 (1938): 367, 395, 396.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Smith, Frank P., Management Trading: Stock Market Prices and Profits (New Haven, 1941), 72–82Google Scholar (discussing data released by the SEC indicating that, on aggregate, “insiders”–directors, officers and investors owning 10 percent or more of the shares–owned 21 percent of the shares of the 1,736 companies registered with the SEC as of December 31, 1935).

60 Leech, Dennis, “Ownership Concentration and Control in Large U.S. Corporations in the 1930s: An Analysis of the T.N.E.C. Sample”, Journal of Industrial Economics 35 (1987): 333CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Burch, Philip H., The Managerial Revolution Reassessed: Family Control in America's Large Corporations (Lexington, Mass., 1972), 128Google Scholar.

61 Goldsmith, Raymond et al. , The Distribution of Ownership in the Two Hundred Largest Nonfinancial Corporations, TNEC Investigation of Concentration of Economic Power, Monograph No. 29 (Washington, D.C., 1940)Google Scholar (hereafter, “TNEC Report”), 15.

62 Sweezy, Paul M., “The Illusion of the ‘Managerial Revolution’”, Science and Society 6 (1942): 1, 6Google Scholar (quoting from an article in Fortune).

63 Gordon, Robert A., Business Leadership in the Large Corporation (Washington, D.C., 1945), 42.Google Scholar

64 Ibid., 25. To be precise, Gordon excluded twenty-one from consideration on the basis of majority ownership. The other three, all railroads, were excluded because they had been leased to and were controlled by other railroads.

65 Ibid., 43.

66 Larner, Robert J., Management Control and the Large Corporation (New York, 1970), 7.Google Scholar

67 Kolko, Gabriel, Wealth and Power in America: An Analysis of Social Class and Income Distribution (New York, 1962), 68.Google Scholar

68 Glasberg, Davita S. and Schwartz, Michael, “Ownership and Control of Corporations”, American Review of Sociology 9 (1983): 311–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

69 Mason, Edward S., “Introduction”, in The Corporation in Modern Society, ed. Mason, Edward S. (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), 1, 4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

70 Berle, Adolf A., “Modern Functions of the Corporate System”, Columbia Law Review 62 (1962): 433, 437.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

71 , Smith, Toward Rational Exuberance, 179Google Scholar; , Berle, “Modern”, 437Google Scholar.

72 Porter, Frank, “The American Plutocracy”, Washington Post, 6 Aug. 1968, A10.Google Scholar

73 Villarejo, Don, “Stock Ownership and the Control of Corporations (Parts I, II)”, New University Thought (Autumn 1961): 33, 49Google Scholar; see also , Burch, Managerial Revolution Reassessed, 9Google Scholar.

74 , Holderness, “Myth of Diffuse Ownership”, 1402.Google Scholar

75 On the 1935 rules, see Securities Exchange Act of 1934, sec. 16(a); Gordon, Robert A., “Stockholdings of Officers and Directors in American Industrial Corporations”, Quarterly Journal of Economics 50 (1936): 622, 623 n3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On 1942, see Securities and Exchange Commission Release Notice, release no. 33–2287, 34-3347 (18 Dec. 1942), sch. 14A, item 5(C), E(3).

76 See Securities and Exchange Commission Release Notice, release no. 33–5609, release no. 34–11616, release no. 35–19140 (25 Aug. 1975) (proposing an amendment to drop the threshold to 5 percent); Hershey, Robert D., “S.E.C. is Tightening Rule on Disclosing Big Stockholders”, New York Times, 25 Feb. 1977, 73 (confi rming the reduction)Google Scholar.

77 Larner, Robert J., “Ownership and Control in the 200 Largest Nonfinancial Corporations, 1929 and 1963”, American Economic Review 56 (1966): 777, 787.Google Scholar

78 Zeitlin, Maurice, “Corporate Ownership and Control: The Large Corporation and the Capitalist Class”, American Journal of Sociology 79 (1974): 1073, 1107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

79 Eisenberg, Melvin A., The Structure of the Corporation: A Legal Analysis (Boston, 1976), 44–45.Google Scholar

80 Hetherington, J. A. C., “When the Sleeper Wakes: Reflections on Corporate Governance and Shareholder Rights”, Hofstra Law Review 8 (1979): 183, 184.Google Scholar

81 , Dent, “Toward Unifying Ownership,” 884, 894.Google Scholar

82 Sheehan, Robert, “Proprietors in the World of Big Business,” Fortune, June 15, 1967, 178, 180.Google Scholar

83 , Burch, Managerial Revolution Reassessed, 5.Google Scholar

84 Chevalier, Jean Marie, “The Problem of Control in Large American Corporations,” Antitrust Bulletin 14 (1969): 173 (using the benchmark adopted to explain the differences between his results and those of Larner, “Management Control”);Google ScholarDemsetz, Harold, “The Structure of Ownership and the Theory of the Firm,” Journalof Law and Economics 26 (1983): 388 (making the general point that the number of companies identifi ed as owner controlled “varies inversely with the toughness of the criterion adopted”)Google Scholar.

85 See studies cited in Cheffins, Corporate Ownership and Control, 13–16, 22 (British studies published between 1953 and 2007)Google Scholar; Cubbin, John and Leech, Dennis, “The Effect of Shareholding Dispersion on the Degree of Control in British Companies: Theory and Measurement,” Economic Journal 93 (1983): 351, 351–52 (British and American studies published between 1932 and 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

86 Gordon, Jeffrey N., “Proxy Contests in an Era of Increasing Shareholder Power: Forget Issuer Proxy Access and Focus on E-Proxy,” Vanderbilt Law Review 61 (2008): 475, 477.Google Scholar

87 Percentages derived from data set out in Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Flow of Funds Accounts of the United States: Flows and Outstandings, third quarter 2008, at 90, table L213 (11 Dec. 2008).Google Scholar

88 , Hawley and , Williams, Rise of Fiduciary Capitalism, 53.Google Scholar

89 Drucker, Peter, The Unseen Revolution(New York, 1976), 1–2.Google Scholar

90 Roe, Mark J., Strong Managers, Weak Owners: The Political Roots of American Corporate Finance(Princeton, N.J., 1994), 54–55;Google ScholarJoseph, G. , Haubrich and , JoãoSantos, A. C., “Alternative Forms of Mixing Banking with Commerce: Evidence from American History,” Financial Markets, Institutions andInstruments 12 (2003): 121, 126–27.Google Scholar

91 , Santos and , Rumble, “American Keiretsu,” 429Google Scholar; , Haubrich and , Santos, “Alternative Forms,” 134–35;Google ScholarSchoenbaum, Thomas J., “Bank Securities Activities and the Need to Separate Trust Departments from Large Commercial Banks,” Journal of Law Reform 10 (1976–1977): 1, 4–5Google Scholar.

92 Perlo, Victor, “‘People's Capitalism’ and Stock-Ownership,” American Economic Review 48 (1958): 333, 343–44, 346.Google Scholar

93 U.S. Congress, House Banking and Currency Committee, Subcommittee on Domestic Finance, Commercial Banks and their Trust Activities, 90th Cong., 2nd sess. (1968) (hereinafter Patman Report), 13.

94 “The New Realities of Corporate Power,” Dun's Review (Dec. 1968): 43, 44.Google Scholar

95 Fitch, Robert and Oppenheimer, Mary, “Who Rules the Corporations? Part 2,” Socialist Revolution 1, no. 5 (1970): 61, 68.Google Scholar

96 Kotz, David M., Bank Control of Large Corporations in the United States(Berkeley, 1978), 10, 148.Google Scholar

97 On the notion of “imposing criticisms” in this context,Google Scholar see Mintz, Beth and Schwartz, Michael, The Power Structure of American Business (Chicago, 1985), 74Google Scholar.

98 Herman, Edward S., “Kotz on Banker Control, Monthly Review (Sept. 1979): 46, 54.Google Scholar See also Klebaner, Benjamin J., “Review of Bank Control of Large Corporations in the United States,” Journal of Economic History 38 (1978): 1017, 1018Google Scholar; Lussier, Robert J. C., “Review of Bank Control of Large Corporations in the United States,” Southern Economic Journal 46 (1980): 976, 977CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

99 , Herman, Corporate Control, 156Google Scholar; , Mintz and , Schwartz, The Power Structure, 76–82;Google Scholar, Glasberg and , Schwartz, “Ownership,” 311, 324Google Scholar.

100 , Mintz and , Schwartz, The Power Structure, 100, 103.Google Scholar

101 Herman, Edward S., “Do Bankers Control Corporations?” Monthly Review (June 1973): 23.Google Scholar

102 , Mintz and , Schwartz, The Power Structure, 98–99;Google Scholar, Herman, “Kotz on Banker Control,” 53–54;Google Scholar, Herman, “Do Bankers Control Corporations?” 12, 23–24Google Scholar.

103 , Herman, Corporate Control, 129, 136.Google Scholar

104 Ibid., 134. See also Fligstein, Neil and Brantley, Peter, “Bank Control, Owner Control, or Organizational Dynamics: Who Controls the Large Modern Corporation?” American Journal of Sociology 98 (1992): 280, 285CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

105 , Herman, Corporate Control, 149–50;Google Scholar, Klebaner, “Review,” 1018Google Scholar; Sweezy, Paul M., “The Resurgence of Financial Control: Fact or Fancy?” Monthly Review (Nov. 1971): 1, 3Google Scholar.

106 Herman, , “Do Bankers Control Corporations?” 21–22;Google Scholar, Lussier, “Review,” 978Google Scholar; Hunsicker, Steven R., “Conflicts of Interest, Economic Distortions, and the Separation of Trust and Commercial Banking Functions,” Southern California Law Review 50 (1977–1978): 611, 672.Google Scholar

107 Soldofsky, Robert M. and Roe, Warren J., “Institutional Holdings of Common Stock: 1969, 1972, and New Developments,” Quarterly Review of Economics and Business 15 (1975): 47, 55.Google Scholar

108 Santos, and Rumble, , “American Keiretsu,” 421; see also 451.Google Scholar

109 Ibid., 435–36, 451.

110 Hawley, and Williams, , Rise of Fiduciary Capitalism, 58–59.Google Scholar

111 Ibid., 58.

112 , Gadhoum, , Lang, and , Young, “Who Controls US?” 343.Google Scholar

113 , Monks and , Minow, Corporate Governance, 110.Google Scholar

114 Shleifer, Andrei and Vishny, Robert W., “Large Shareholders and Corporate Control,” Journal of Political Economy 94 (1986): 461, 462.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

115 SP 500 Factsheet at Standard & Poor's Web site (2008), available at http://www2. standardandpoors.com/spf/pdf/index/SP_500_Factsheet.pdf (last visited 5 Oct. 2008); NYSE Listings Directory at NYSE Web site, available at http://www.nyse.com/about/listed/ lc_ny_overview.html, entry under Region/United States (last visited 29 Sept. 2008) (eighty pages of listed companies with twenty companies per page, except for the final page, yielding nearly sixteen hundred companies); NASDAQ Facts available at NASDAQ Web site, available at http://www.nasdaq.com/reference/nasdaq_facts.stm (last visited 29 Sept. 2008) (3,200 companies traded, 335 from outside the U.S.).

116 Bureau, U.S. Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2009 (Washington, D.C., 2008), 506 (table 761).Google Scholar

117 Holderness, “Myth of Diffuse Ownership,” 1383.

118 , Sweezy, “The Illusion of the ‘Managerial Revolution,’” 5Google Scholar; , Villarejo, “Stock Ownership, I and II,” 52Google Scholar; Palmer, John P., “The Separation of Ownership from Control in Large U.S. Industrial Corporations,” Quarterly Review of Economics & Business (1972): 12, 58Google Scholar.

119 Ownership-oriented research accelerated beginning in the 1980s, due primarily to the emergence of electronic databases with commercially available share ownership data. Appendices 5 and 6 are not intended to providea comprehensive survey of the relevant studies. For instance, samples biased in favor of companies with special characteristics have not been included, such as Laura C. Field and Dennis P. Sheehan, “IPO Underpricing and Outside Blockholdings,” Journal of Corporate Finance 10 (2004): 263 (firms that had recently carried out IPOs); Denis, David J., Denis, Diane K., and Sarin, Atulya, “Ownership Structure and Top Executive Turnover,” Journal of Financial Economics 45 (1997): 193CrossRefGoogle Scholar (firms experiencing CEO turnover); Singh, Manohar and Davidson, William N., “Agency Costs, Ownership Structure, and Corporate Governance Mechanisms,” Journal of Banking and Finance 27 (2003): 793 (sample was biased strongly in favor of companies that had diversified).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

120 Heflin, Frank and Shaw, Kenneth W., “Blockholder Ownership and Market Liquidity,” Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis(2000) 35: 621Google Scholar; Bhagat, Sanjai, Black, Bernard S., and Blair, Margaret M., “Relational Investingand Firm Performance,” Journal of Financial Research (2004) 27: 1Google Scholar.

121 Becht, Marco, “Beneficial Ownership in the United States,” in The Control of Corporate Europe, ed. Barca, Fabrizio and Becht, Marco (Oxford,2001), 285Google Scholar; , Gadhoum, , Lang, and , Young, “Who Owns US?”Google Scholar

122 Holderness, “Myth of Diffuse Ownership,” 1384.Google Scholar

123 Ibid., 1380–81, 1384, discussing Becht's study. Holderness does not cite the Gadhoum, Lang, and Young study.

124 Standard & Poor's, “S&P Releases Details of Full Float Adjustment for U.S Indices,” press release, 28 Sept. 2004, available at http://www2.standardandpoors.com/spf/pdf/index/092804FloatFinalPR.pdf (accessed 8 Sept. 2008).

125 Standard & Poor's, “Float Adjustment FAQ,” 28 Sept. 2004, 5, available at http://www2.standardandpoors.com/spf/pdf/index/Float%20FAQ.pdf (accessed 8 Sept. 2008).

126 Standard & Poor's, “Impact of Float Adjustment of U.S. Indices,” 28 Sept. 2004, 18, available at http://www2.standardandpoors.com/spf/pdf/index/Float%20Impact.pdf (accessed 8 Sept. 2008).

127 See Standard & Poor's Web site for a link to S&P MidCap 400 and S&P SmallCap 600 under United States, http://ww2.standardandpoors.com/(accessed 9 Sept. 2008).

128 Standard & Poor's, “S&P Releases Details” Standard & Poor's, “Impact of Float Adjustment,” 18.

129 , Berle and , Means, Modern, 19, 67–85, 108–9;Google Scholar, Gordon, “Ownership,” 369–70; TNEC ReportGoogle Scholar.

130 , Larner, “Ownership”;Google Scholar, Sheehan, “Proprietors”;Google Scholar, Larner, ManagementGoogle Scholar; , Palmer, “Separation,” p. 55Google Scholar; , Herman, Corporate, pp. 54–65Google Scholar; Allen, Michael P., “Power and Privilege in the Large Corporation: Corporate Control and Managerial Compensation,” American Journal of Sociology 86 (1981): 1112;CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Demsetz, “Structure.”Google Scholar

131 , Villarejo, “Stock”;Google ScholarSecurities and Exchange Commission, Report of the Special Study of Securities Markets of the Securities and Exchange Commission, H.R. Doc. No. 95, 88th Cong., pt. 3, 19–20, 30, chart IXaGoogle Scholar; , Chevalier, “Problem”;Google Scholar, Burch, ManagerialGoogle Scholar; Pedersen, Lawrence and Tabb, William K., “Ownership and Control of Large Corporations Revisited,” Antitrust Bulletin 21 (1976): 53Google Scholar.

132 Patman Report; Kotz,Bank; , Santos and , Rumble, “American.”Google Scholar

133 , Shleifer and , Vishny, “Large”;Google ScholarPorta, Rafael La, Lopez-de-Silanes, Florencio and Shleifer, Andrei, “Corporate Ownership Around the World,” Journal of Finance 54 (1999): 471CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Anderson, Ronald C. and Reeb, David M., “Founding-Family Ownership and Firm Performance: Evidence from the S&P 500,” Journal of Finance 58 (2003): 1301CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Villalonga, Belen and Amit, Raphael, “How Are U.S. Family Firms Controlled? Review of Financial Studies 22 (2009): 3047.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

134 Demsetz, Harold and Lehn, Kenneth, “The Structure of Corporate Ownership: Causes and Consequences,” Journal of Political Economy 93 (1985): 1155CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mikkelson, Wayne H. and Partch, M. Megan, “Managers’ Voting Rights and CorporateControl,” Journal of Financial Economics 25 (1989): 263CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Porta, La, , Lopez-de-Silanes and , Shleifer, “Corporate”;Google ScholarHolderness, Clifford G., Kroszner, Randall S., and Sheehan, Dennis P., “Were the Good Old Days That Good? Changes in Managerial Stock Ownership since the Great Depression,” Journal of Finance 54 (1999): 435CrossRefGoogle Scholar; , Heflin and , Shaw, “Blockholder”;Google Scholar, Becht, “Beneficial”;Google Scholar, Bhagat, , Black and , Blair, “Relational”;Google Scholar, Gadhoum, , Lang and , Young, “Who Owns US?”;Google ScholarHolderness, , “Myth of Diffuse Ownership”Gugler, Klaus, Mueller, Dennis C., and Yurtoglu, B. Burcin, “Insider Ownership, Ownership Concentration, and Investment Performance: An International Comparison,” Journal of Corporate Finance 14 (2008): 688–705Google Scholar.