Markus P. Urban investigates the influence of large shareholders (the so-called blockholders)
on agency costs and firm value thereby accounting for blockholder characteristics and
blockholder interrelationships. The work provides a profound theoretical and empirical analysis
on the nature and effect of shareholder engagement with due regard to the specifics of the
German institutional environment. Its empirical results illustrate that the effect of
shareholder engagement depends on the characteristics of the specific blockholder as well as on
interrelationships with additional blockholders.
