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All-electron band-structure calculations and photoemission experiments on II-VI semiconductors both exhibit a metal d subband inside the main valence band. It has nevertheless been customary in pseudopotential and tight-binding approaches to neglect the metal d band by choosing Hamiltonian parameters which place this band inside the chemically inert atomic cores. Using all-electron self-consistent electronic-structure techniques (which treat the outermost d electrons on the same footing as other valence electrons) and comparing the results to those obtained by methods which remove the d band from the valence spectrum, we study their effects on valence properties. For II-VI semiconductors we find that p-d repulsion and hybridization (i) lower the band gaps,(ii) reduce the cohesive energy,(iii) increase the equilibrium lattice parameters,(iv) reduce the spin-orbit splitting,(v) alter the sign of the crystal-field …