RicherFin Education

Corporate Finance

Governance and Agency Problems

Corporate governance allocates decision, control and information rights when managers, shareholders, lenders and minority owners do not bear the same financial consequences.

The decision examined

Conflicts extend beyond managers and shareholders. Controlling owners may transfer value from minorities, while highly levered shareholders may accept risks that weaken creditors.

Learning outcomes

  • Identify principal, agent and financial conflict.
  • Distinguish monitoring, bonding and residual loss.
  • Analyse related-party decisions and creditor transfers.

Key concepts

  • Agency cost
  • Information asymmetry
  • Control
  • Minority owners
  • Covenants
  • Related party

Course structure

  1. Ownership and decision
  2. Agency costs
  3. Managers
  4. Creditors
  5. Minorities
  6. Board and information

Analytical framework

Decompose agency cost

The economic cost of a conflict includes monitoring, commitments made to reassure capital providers and the loss that remains:

Agency cost

Agency cost = Monitoring + Bonding + Residual loss

Additional control is useful only when the expected reduction in loss exceeds its own cost and does not block necessary decisions.

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