This study investigates the relationship between European utility companies' compliance with the EU Taxonomy for Sustainable Activities and their overall performance. The EU Taxonomy is a new regulation proposed by the European Commission to promote sustainable finance by 2050. The literature shows that nonfinancial disclosures have a favorable impact on financial performance. However, no research has been conducted to assess the implementation of the EU Taxonomy and its effect on firm performance. Using a sample of European utilities from 2012 to 2022, a difference‐in‐differences (DiD) model was applied to analyze the causal relationship between compliance and performance. Based on institutional and signaling theories, the results show that companies reporting alignment with the Taxonomy exhibit higher market value, profitability, and efficiency than those that do not. This study contributes to firms' transparency and enriches academic discussions by offering insights for policymakers and by improving industry practices.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of ownership structure on bank performance in EU-15 countries. Specifically, it examines to what extent shareholder type and the degree of shareholder concentration affect the banks’ profitability, risk and technical efficiency.Design/methodology/approach: This study uses a sample of 1,459 banks operating in EU-15 countries from 2011 to 2015. It constructs a set of continuous variables capturing the ownership nature, the concentration and their interactions, and estimates an instrumental variable random effect (IV-RE) model. In addition, a panel data stochastic frontier analysis is conducted to estimate the time-varying technical efficiency for profitability and costs.Findings: The empirical analysis shows that bank performance is affected by shareholder type. When regressed against the entrenchment behavior of the controlling owner hypothesis, banks with large-block shareholders are more profitable, less risky and more profit efficient. Further, ownership concentration reverts the negative effect related to the institutional, bank and industry ownership.Research limitations/implications: The results support the hypothesis that concentrated ownership helps to overcome agency problems. They also confirm that managerial involvement in banks’ capital enhances a bank’s profit and its volatility.Originality/value: To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to consider the ownership nature, the concentration and their interaction using continuous variables, which allows for more precise inferences. The results provide new evidence that bank profitability, cost efficiency and risk are affected by the type of direct shareholders.