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Full-Text Articles in Securities Law
Frozen Charters, Scott Hirst
Frozen Charters, Scott Hirst
Faculty Scholarship
In 2012, the New York Stock Exchange changed its policies to prevent brokers voting shares on corporate governance proposals where they had not received instructions from beneficial owners. Although the change was intended to protect investors and improve corporate governance, it has had the opposite effect: a significant number of U.S. public companies are no longer able to amend important parts of their corporate charters, despite the support of their boards of directors and overwhelming majorities of shareholders. Their charters are frozen.
This paper provides the first empirical and policy analysis of the broker voting change and its significant unintended …
Private Ordering And The Proxy Access Debate, Scott Hirst, Lucian A. Bebchuk
Private Ordering And The Proxy Access Debate, Scott Hirst, Lucian A. Bebchuk
Faculty Scholarship
This Article examines two “meta” issues raised by opponents of the SEC’s proposal to provide shareholders with rights to place director candidates on the company’s proxy materials. First, opponents argue that, even assuming proxy access is desirable in many circumstances, the existing no-access default should be retained and the adoption of proxy access arrangements should be left to opting out of this default on a company-by-company basis. This Article, however, identifies strong reasons against retaining no-access as the default. There is substantial empirical evidence indicating that director insulation from removal is associated with lower firm value and worse performance. Furthermore, …