Corporate Governance and Organizational Behavior Review / Volume 3, Issue 2, 2019 58 BOOK REVIEW: “CORPORATE OWNERSHIP AND CONTROL: INTERNATIONAL TRENDS” by Alexander N. Kostyuk, Marco Tutino, Stefan Prigge (Virtus Interpress, 2019) Hanne S. Birkmose * * Department of Law, Aarhus University, Denmark How to cite this paper: Birkmose, H. S. (2019). Book review: “Corporate ownership and control: International trends”. Corporate Governance and Organizational Behavior Review, 3(2), 58- 59. http://doi.org/10.22495/cgobr_v3_i2_p6 Copyright © 2019 The Authors This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ ISSN Online: 2521-1889 ISSN Print: 2521-1870 Received: 12.09.2019 Accepted: 20.11.2019 JEL Classification: G32, G34 DOI: 10.22495/cgobr_v3_i2_p6 “Corporate Ownership and Control: International Trends” deals with some of the most fundamental questions in the ongoing corporate governance debate: Which ownership structures prevail? What drives the choice among ownership structures? Which implications does the dominant ownership structure have for the different internal and external corporate governance mechanisms? Is there a link between corporate ownership and company performance? The discussion on the allocation of ownership and control is not new (Demsetz, 1983; Jensen & Meckling, 1976). However, this book contributes to the debate with new perspectives, while providing a useful comparison of the current practices in the different countries examined. The examination of corporate ownership and control issues in the nine countries (the USA, Italy, Spain, Turkey, New Zealand, China, Brazil, India, Nigeria) complements existing literature (Damijan & Damijan, 2019; Ruan, Tian, & Ma, 2009; Boubaker, 2007; Carvalhal da Silva & Câmara Leal, 2006; Chapelle, 2004) on comparative corporate governance with its novel approach. Consequently, it is a valuable contribution to the ongoing debate for both practitioners as well as academic researchers. While concentrated ownership has been connected with the risk of extractions of private benefits, the oppression of minority shareholders and tunnelling (Choi, 2018; Claessens, Djankov, Fan, & Lang, 2002; Colpan & Cuervo-Cazurra, 2018; Dyck & Zingales, 2004; La Porta, Lopez-De-Silanes, & Shleifer, 1999), we still see no clear indications of a convergence in ownership structures. The contributions of this book present the features of some of the many forms of ownership found in developed and emerging economies and they give an excellent account of some of the reasons why concentrated ownership continues to be the predominant ownership structure in many jurisdictions outside the Anglo-Saxon countries. The analysis of ownership structures also includes valuable insights on the interconnectivity of ownership structures and corporate governance mechanisms, such as the market of corporate control and legal protection of minorities. The complexity of ownership structures and control is captured by the contributors as they take the discussion beyond that of concentrated or dispersed ownership performed previously by AlHares, King, Ntim, and Byrne (2018), Meier and Meier (2013), Habbash (2012). This book provides valuable insight into the concentration of control by the use of control enhancing mechanisms, such as different classes of shares, pyramid structures and shareholder agreements may allow control rights to be separated