Blockholder monitoring is central to corporate governance, but blockholders large enough to exercise significant unilateral influence are rare. Mechanisms that enable small block-holders to exert collective influence are therefore important. We...Read more
The dialogue of the board and its chairman with investors is an established practice in many countries, such as the United Kingdom, the USA, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and recently also Germany. In the UK this dialogue covers the whole...Read more
This paper focuses on recent trends in shareholder participation in corporate governance in a number of major developed countries. Conflicting attitudes toward shareholder participation, especially in the US, have colored the underlying debate...Read more
Does earnings management, even though legal, hinder investor trust in reported earnings? Or do investors regard earnings management as a way for firms to convey private information, or simply as a neutral feature of financial reporting? We find...Read more
Boards are crucial to shareholder wealth. Yet, little is known about how shareholder oversight affects director incentives. Using exogenous industry shocks to institutional investor portfolios, we find that...Read more
Widely-cited theoretical models predict that large shareholders will monitor management, while small shareholders will free-ride. However, we find that institutional investors are particularly likely to oppose management on Say-On-Pay for their...Read more
We estimate institutional investor preferences from proxy voting records. The W-NOMINATE method maps investors onto a left-right dimension based on votes for fiscal year 2012. Public pension funds and other investors on the left support a more...Read more
This paper shows how network theory can improve our understanding of institutional investors’ voting behavior and, more generally, their role in corporate governance. The standard idea is that institutional investors compete against each other on...Read more
For decades, corporate law played a pivotal role in regulating corporations across the United States. Consequently, Delaware, the leading state of incorporation, and its courts came to occupy a central and influential position in corporate law...Read more
In firms with multiple blockholders governance via exit is affected by how blockholders react to each others' exit. Institutional investors, who hold the majority of equity blocks, are heterogeneous in their incentives. How do these incentives...Read more
How do active managers engage with portfolio firms? And, what role does monitoring and engagement play in their trading decisions? We use proprietary data from a large UK active asset manager with a long-standing commitment to stewardship to...Read more
The goal of this paper is to examine whether the stewardship code, which emanated in circumstances that are specific to the United Kingdom (UK), is capable of transposition to other jurisdictions that experience different corporate structures as...Read more