3. Institutional Background

This chapter puts the various aspects of corporate governance, risk management, and compliance identified before in context with the reality of banking regulation and reporting, particularly in Brazil and Germany. Properly working legal and judicial systems are crucial for both, corporate governance and financial markets development. Generally, the ease of contracting has been referred to above with relation to the Rule of Law, equally property rights—including shareholder rights—, the enforceability of legal rights within an acceptable timeframe, and the absence of corruption. With regards to corporate governance, specific rules aiming at increasing transparency, such as disclosure obligations, are important. Those are difficult to quantify and cannot be compared easily, as they are of a rather qualitative character. Nonetheless, even a more abstract comparison can yield significant differences between countries.