26. Corporate Governance Reform Within the United States and the United Kingdom, the main corporate governance problem is the one treated by agency theory: with widespread share ownership, how can a firm align management’s interest with that of the shareholders? Because individual shareholders do not have the resources or the power to monitor management, the U.S. and U.K. markets rely on regulators to assist in the agency theory monitoring task. Outside the U.S. and U.K., large, controlling shareholders are in the majority – these entities are able to monitor management in some ways better than the regulators can.