Finally, a second large shareholder sitting on a companyÕs board may mitigate the conflict of interest arising from a separation of ownership and control. We therefore set Second large shareholder dummy equal to 1 when a shareholder unaffiliated to the largest shareholder owns more than 5% and holds a board seat in a company and 0, otherwise. Approximately 24% of the firms in our sample have another large share- holder with some influence on the board.