Robert A. G. Monks and the Judge Institute, the University of Cambridge, UK, are delighted to announce the winners of the 1996 Monks Corporate Governance essay competition:

First Prize - $5,000 - James P. Hawley and Andrew T. Williams - Corporate Governance in the United States: The Rise of Fiduciary Capitalism - A review of the Literature.

Second Prize - $2,000 - Dr. Luc Renneboog - Ownership, Managerial Control and the Governance of Poorly Performing Companies Listed on the London and Brussels Stock Exchanges.

Third Prize - $1,000 - Kenneth A. Borokhovich, Robert Parrino and Teresa Trapani - Outside Directors and CEO Selection.

Honorable Mention: Jon Lukomnik - Shareholder Activism: Two Alpha-Generating Strategies in One, Donald G. Margotta - The Business Judgement Rule vs. the Efficient market Hypothesis, and GP Stapledon - The Structure of Share Ownership and Control: The Potential for Institutional Investor Activism.

More than 100 papers were submitted from all over the world and the winners were chosen by an international panel of experts in the field: Sir Adrian Cadbury from the United Kingdom, Ira M. Millstein from Weil, Gotshall & Manges in New York, R.I Tricker of Hong Kong and the United Kingdom, Marie Sophie L’Helias from Paris and Professor Joseph Grundfest from Stanford Law School in Palo Alto, California. The full text of all of the papers and bibliographic information about all of the entries are now available on the LENS Web Site.

This competition is part of an effort by Robert Monks and Nell Minow to develop academic interest and expertise in the field of corporate governance. The emergence of corporate governance as a category of vast importance in business, politics and across a wide academic spectrum has encouraged the Judge Institute of Cambridge University to commit the resources necessary to become a center for its study. "It was a real pleasure to read through all of the submissions, and see the range of empirical work and analysis scholars are undertaking in this field," said Mr. Monks. "We received papers from experts in finance, economics, law, and business. They covered issues from executive pay to the role of directors to shareholder activism. I am looking forward to working with the Judge Institute to ensure that this kind of multi-disciplinary and cross-cultural approach continues to be applied to corporate governance issues."

Bob Monks and Nell Minow, founders of Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and activist investment firm LENS, have been leaders in developing this field. They have collaborated in writing three books on the subject (Power and Accountability, HarperBusiness 1991; Corporate Governance, Blackwell 1995; Watching the Watchers: Corporate Governance for the 21st Century, Blackwell 1996), have testified several dozen times before Congressional, state and administrative committees, have held governmental positions critical to this field and have delivered papers before more than 100 groups on four continents.

Over the last decade Monks and Minow have made every effort to collect, codify and interpret as much information as possible relating to the field of corporate governance, creating a comprehensive bibliographic database with more than 11,000 entries, part of which will be made available sometime next year through the extensive LENS site on the World Wide Web. The database includes scholarly papers and studies, articles from the financial and mainstream press, speeches, testimony, books, legislation, and other documents and audiovisual materials. The focus is on developments in the United States, but there are extensive materials about corporate governance in more than 20 countries.

Monks and Minow plan to transfer the hard copies and database at some point to the library at the Judge Institute, so that it can be developed further and made available through the Institute to anyone doing research in this field. Professor Sandra Dawson, Director of the Institute commented: "It is a wonderful opportunity for us to work with Bob Monks and Nell Minow in our major program of research and executive education in Corporate Governance. Having their data base at Cambridge creates the potential for a genuinely international program of governance education and research, linking students, scholars, directors and materials through the internet."

LENS is an $80 million investment firm that uses shareholder activism to increase the value of portfolio companies.

The Judge Institute of Management is the Business School of Cambridge University. It offers MBA and research degrees, and works with companies to improve their effectiveness through research and executive education. Its research programs in finance, accounting, organizational behavior, ethics and the environment provide a strong foundation for its big initiative in corporate governance.

Further information from Professor Sandra Dawson or Dr. John Roberts at telephone: 1223-39590

email: sjnd@eng.cam.ac.uk or jdr@eng.cam.ac.uk