Activism

Shareholder Rights and Shareholder Activism: The Role of the General Meeting of Shareholders

Boards in Europe - Accountability and Convergence

Corporate boards play a central role in corporate governance and therefore are regulated in the corporate law and corporate governance codes of all industrialized countries. Yet while there is a common core of rules on the boards,...

The Trajectory of American Corporate Governance: Shareholder Empowerment and Private Ordering Combat

Why are shareholder empowerment and activism such controversial issues in the United States today? Other common law jurisdictions, including the United Kingdom, have welcomed and encouraged greater shareholder participation and...

Shareholder Sustainability Activism in the Netherlands

Corporations play a crucial role in achieving a sustainable world. In achieving corporate sustainability, the current regulatory frameworks generally emphasize the role of the corporate board, but today’s media suggest that...

The Threat of Intervention

We develop a model in which an activist shareholder can discipline management through intervention and through the threat of intervention. A weaker disciplinary role played by the intervention mechanism leads to lower firm value and...

The Wall Street Stampede: Exit as Governance with Interacting Blockholders

The growth of the asset management industry has made it commonplace for firms to have multiple institutional blockholders. In such firms, the strength of governance via exit depends on how blockholders react to each other's exit....

Shareholder Voting in an Age of Intermediary Capitalism

Shareholder voting is a key part of contemporary American corporate governance. As numerous contemporary battles between corporate management and shareholders illustrate, voting has never been more important. Yet, traditional...

Answering the Say for No Pay

Say on pay is considered an important tool to mitigate inappropriate remuneration practices. Over the years, many countries provided shareholders with this say on pay-tool, although often the vote is exclusively of an advisory...

Institutional Ownership and Governance

This paper describes different forms of ownership across countries and how these forms influence the way companies are governed. In most stock markets in the world, listed companies frequently have a controlling shareholder, usually...

The Big Three and Corporate Carbon Emissions Around the World

This paper examines the role of the “Big Three” (i.e., BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street Global Advisors) on the reduction of corporate carbon emissions around the world. Using novel data on engagements of the Big Three with...

Foreign Investor Activism in Japan: The First Ten Years

The Effect of Liquidity on Governance

This paper studies the effect of stock liquidity on blockholder governance. Conditional upon acquiring a stake, liquidity reduces the likelihood that a blockholder governs through voice (intervention) – as shown by the greater...