The book sheds light on two closely related and highly relevant governance themes: the
composition of supervisory boards and financial expertise as well as ownership structure. The
author focuses on the financial expertise of supervisory boards and its impact on performance
and risk. He analyses how supervisory boards are composed and how much financial expertise
their members have assesses the impact of financial expertise on a banks¿ risk-return profiles
and investigates if financial expertise in internal bank governance contributes to more
stability and less risk taking in banking. Finally he examines the effects of the ownership
structure on credit risk. He finds that banks with a more concentrated ownership structure tend
to behave riskier which is indicated by larger CDS spreads.
