Shareholder voting on corporate acquisitions is controversial. In most countries acquisition decisions are delegated to boards and shareholder approval is discretionary, which makes existing empirical studies inconclusive. We study the U.K. setting where shareholder approval is imposed exogenously via a threshold test that provides strong identification. U.K.
shareholders gain 8 cents per dollar at announcement with mandatory voting, or $13.6 billion over 1992-2010 in aggregate; without voting U.K. shareholders lost $3 billion. Multidimensional regression discontinuity analysis supports a causal interpretation. The evidence suggests that mandatory voting imposes a binding constraint on acquirer CEOs.
In recent times, there has been an unprecedented surge in national security review (NSR) measures, with host jurisdictions implementing restrictions...
The E.U. Takeover Directive was passed twenty years ago with the main aim of fostering a single European takeover market. However, subsequent economic,...
We analyze the impact of a large shareholder disclosing its voting decisions prior to shareholder meetings on final vote outcomes for management and...