The research on which this book is based forms part of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) project An International Study of the Financing of Industry. The work which is reported in this book was financed by the Anglo-German Foundation for the Study of Industrial Society. The CEPR project as a whole was also financed by the Bank of England, the Commission of the European Communities, the Economic and Social Research Council, the Esmée Fairbairn Charitable Trust, the Japan Foundation, and the Nuffield Foundation. We are very grateful to all these organisations for their support.

We have incurred many debts to individuals while writing this book. Our colleagues on the CEPR project have made a great contribution to the book, both by commenting on the ideas in it, and by providing the intellectual framework within which it developed. We are, therefore, extremely grateful to Ian Alexander, Elisabetta Bertero, Jenny Corbett, Tim Jenkinson, Colin Mayer, and Masako Nagamitsu. We received help and advice from a number of people in the course of undertaking the research on which this book is based, and it is a pleasure to thank them: Luca Anderlini; Margaret Bray, Martin Hellwig, Alan Hughes, Jane Humphries, Christel Lane, Bruce Lyons, Geoffrey Meeks, Manfred J.M. Neumann, Marcus Nibler, Bernd Rudolph, and Martin Weale. For reasons of confidentiality, we cannot thank by name the various individuals at German banks and firms who generously gave time to participate in interviews, but we are very grateful to all of them. We are also grateful to a number of members of the staff of the Deutsche Bundesbank, who answered many questions for us and provided us with unpublished data.