Law Commons^™

Hail Britannia?: Institutional Investor Behavior Under Limited Regulation, John C. Coffee Jr., Bernard S. Black

Faculty Scholarship

We explore the role that legal restrictions and path dependence play in determining a country's corporate governance and finance through a case study of institutional investors in the United Kingdom. The U.K. has the same array of institutional investors as the U.S., much looser regulation of these investors, and a strong securities market (much like the U.S.). On the whole, British institutional investors are moderately more active than their U.S. counterparts. They intervene in companies to change management a few times per year. But they are still often passive, absent a crisis, and often prefer ...