Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

Designated Directors In The Boardroom: Their Impact On Governance And Performance And Shareholder Wealth Effects, Laura Seery Cole

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the appointment of designated directors on boards of directors. Designated director appointments are uncontested board appointments by activist investors, whereby normal nominating and voting election procedures are circumvented. Instances such as these, where directors are appointed rather than elected, are a form of shareholder access to the proxy. In this dissertation, new evidence is provided that is relevant to the proxy access debate by investigating the hypothesis that firms with appointed designated directors have different firm and governance characteristics than firms with elected directors. In particular, the following questions are asked: what are the shareholder wealth effects …