Independent Supervisory Directors in Family-Controlled Publicly Listed Corporations

Independent Supervisory Directors in Family-Controlled Publicly Listed Corporations: Is There a Need to Revisit the EU Independence Standards? This contribution analyzes whether the current focus of the EU regulator on empowering independent directors is effective in corporations with a concentrated (family) ownership structure. The basic hypothesis of this contribution is that, contrary to the excessively optimistic expectations of the EU regulator, there are serious inefficiencies in the concept of independent directors when it comes to concentrated (family) ownership structures. The contribution relies on a series of empirical studies indicating a positive correlation between operating performance and family influence in European stock corporations.