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Corporate ownership and control in Victorian Britain
Author(s) -
Acheson Graeme G.,
Campbell Gareth,
Turner John D.,
Vanteeva Nadia
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
the economic history review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.014
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1468-0289
pISSN - 0013-0117
DOI - 10.1111/ehr.12086
Subject(s) - voting , shareholder , capital (architecture) , control (management) , corporate law , capital market , business , voting trust , accounting , economics , market economy , law , law and economics , corporate governance , finance , political science , disapproval voting , politics , history , management , archaeology
Using ownership and control data for 890 firm‐years, this article examines the concentration of capital and voting rights in B ritish companies in the second half of the nineteenth century. We find that both capital and voting rights were diffuse by modern‐day standards. However, this does not necessarily mean that there was a modern‐style separation of ownership from control in V ictorian B ritain. One major implication of our findings is that diffuse ownership was present in the UK much earlier than previously thought, and given that it occurred in an era with weak shareholder protection law, it somewhat undermines the influential law and finance hypothesis. We also find that diffuse ownership is correlated with large boards, a L ondon head office, non‐linear voting rights, and shares traded on multiple markets.