Discussion and Conclusion

Abstract

Germany and Brazil are clearly different in many aspects, but surprisingly similar when it comes to certain aspects of corporate governance and risk management in financial institutions. On a macro-economic level, they are indeed comparable. Both are among the biggest countries in terms of their economies, and Brazil at times shows stronger data. For instance, market capitalization reaches only 43.4% of GDP in Germany, but 54.6% in Brazil, while these ratios in countries such as the US (114.9%) and the UK (122.0%) are more than twice as high. Given that this study has focused on the period since 2007, and thus on the global financial and European debt crises, many of the similarities found herein might be attributed to the fact that both countries have fared relatively well during that period, which on the other hand makes them rather comparable despite their obvious differences.