New characterizations of von Neumann regular rings and a conjecture of Shamsuddin.
A theorem of Utumi states that if R is a right self-injective ring such that every maximal ideal has nonzero annihilator, then R modulo the Jacobson radical J is a finite product of simple rings and is a von Neuman regular ring. We prove two theorems and a conjecture of Shamsuddin that characterize when R itself is a von Neumann ring, using a splitting theorem of the author on when the maximal regular ideal of a ring splits off.