Wolf Pack Activism

Alon Brav, Amil Dasgupta, Richmond Mathews

Series number :

Serial Number:

501/2017

Date posted :

April 01 2017

Last revised :

July 30 2019

SSRN

Keywords

Corporate governance; blockholder monitoring; institutional investors; reputation concerns; strategic complementarity

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 present a model in which one or more sizeable lead activists implicitly coordinate with many smaller followers in engaging target management.

Our model formalizes a key source of complementarity across the engagement strategies of institutional blockholders, arising from their motivation to attract investment flows, which overcomes free riding even for small blockholders and enables coordinated engagement. We also endogenize ownership changes in anticipation of activism campaigns.

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