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Articles 1 - 20 of 20
Full-Text Articles in Business
Purpose Proposals, Jill E. Fisch
Purpose Proposals, Jill E. Fisch
All Faculty Scholarship
Repurposing the corporation is the hot issue in corporate governance. Commentators, investors and increasingly issuers, maintain that corporations should shift their focus from maximizing profits for shareholders to generating value for a more expansive group of stakeholders. Corporations are also being called upon to address societal concerns – from climate change and voting rights to racial justice and wealth inequality.
The shareholder proposal rule, Rule 14a–8, offers one potential tool for repurposing the corporation. This Article describes the introduction of innovative proposals seeking to formalize corporate commitments to stakeholder governance. These “purpose proposals” reflect a new dynamic in the debate …
The Uncertain Stewardship Potential Of Index Funds, Jill E. Fisch
The Uncertain Stewardship Potential Of Index Funds, Jill E. Fisch
All Faculty Scholarship
Regulators and commentators around the world are increasingly demanding that institutional investors engage in stewardship with respect to their portfolio companies. Further, the demand for stewardship has broadened from an expectation that investors engage to reduce agency costs and promote economic value to a call for investors to demand that companies serve a broader range of societal interests and objectives. This chapter considers calls for stewardship in the context of the U.S. capital markets specifically as applied to index funds. It argues that, irrespective of the merits of institutional stewardship generally, the structure of index funds and the business environment …
Shareholder Engagement In The United States, Vikramaditya S. Khanna
Shareholder Engagement In The United States, Vikramaditya S. Khanna
Book Chapters
Shareholder voting and engagement in the US have undergone substantial changes over the last 50 years. They have moved from being relatively sleepy issues to those that trigger insomnia in even the most hardened executives. The changes in the ownership structure of US publicly traded firms are probably the most important reason for the shift, but so too are rule changes that have facilitated greater shareholder activism. This chapter explores these developments while describing the rules of the road for shareholder voting in the US by focusing on Delaware jurisprudence and changes in US federal securities regulations. It also examines …
Mutual Fund Stewardship And The Empty Voting Problem, Jill E. Fisch
Mutual Fund Stewardship And The Empty Voting Problem, Jill E. Fisch
All Faculty Scholarship
When Roberta Karmel wrote the articles that are the subject of this symposium, she was skeptical of both the potential value of shareholder voting and the emerging involvement of institutional investors in corporate governance. In the ensuing years, both the increased role and engagement of institutional investors and the heightened importance of shareholder voting offer new reasons to take Professor Karmel’s concerns seriously. Institutional investors have taken on a broader range of issues ranging from diversity and political spending to climate change and human capital management, and their ability to influence corporate policy on these issues has become more significant. …
How Does Shareholder Voting Influence Individual Investors’ Investment Decisions?, Yushi Tian
How Does Shareholder Voting Influence Individual Investors’ Investment Decisions?, Yushi Tian
Doctoral Dissertations
Shareholder voting is an important way for investors to participate in corporate governance. In this study, I examine, as individual investors participate in shareholder voting, whether and how their investment decision is affected by the consistency between their own vote and management’s final decision on the voting issue (i.e., opinion consistency) and whether management’ final decision aligns with the majority or minority of investors (i.e., management position). Using ego-defensiveness theory and majority effect, I predict and find that when investors have stronger opinions on the voting issue, they make more positive investment decisions if management’s final decision on the voting …
Synthetic Governance, Byung Hyun Anh, Jill E. Fisch, Panos N. Patatoukas, Steven Davidoff Solomon
Synthetic Governance, Byung Hyun Anh, Jill E. Fisch, Panos N. Patatoukas, Steven Davidoff Solomon
All Faculty Scholarship
Although securities regulation is distinct from corporate governance, the two fields have considerable substantive overlap. By increasing the transparency and efficiency of the capital markets, securities regulation can also enhance the capacity of those markets to discipline governance decisions. The importance of market discipline is heightened by the increasingly vocal debate over what constitutes “good” corporate governance.
Securities product innovation offers new tools to address this debate. The rise of index-based investing provides a market-based mechanism for selecting among governance options and evaluating their effects. Through the creation of bespoke governance index funds, asset managers can create indexes that correspond …
Fiduciary Blind Spot: The Failure Of Institutional Investors To Prevent The Illegitimate Use Of Working Americans' Savings For Corporate Political Spending, Leo E. Strine Jr.
Fiduciary Blind Spot: The Failure Of Institutional Investors To Prevent The Illegitimate Use Of Working Americans' Savings For Corporate Political Spending, Leo E. Strine Jr.
All Faculty Scholarship
For decades, American workers have been subjected to increasing pressure to become forced capitalists, in the sense that to provide for retirement for themselves, and to pay for college for their children, they must turn part of their income every month over to mutual funds who participate in 401(k) and 529 programs. These “Worker Investors” save for the long term, often hold portfolios that are a proxy for the entire economy, and depend on the economy’s ability to generate good jobs and sustainable growth in order for them to be able to have economic security. In recent years, there has …
Is Say On Pay All About Pay? The Impact Of Firm Performance, Jill E. Fisch, Darius Palia, Steven Davidoff Solomon
Is Say On Pay All About Pay? The Impact Of Firm Performance, Jill E. Fisch, Darius Palia, Steven Davidoff Solomon
Steven M. Davidoff Solomon
The Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 mandated a number of regulatory reforms including a requirement that large U.S. public companies provide their shareholders with the opportunity to cast a non-binding vote on executive compensation. The “say on pay” vote was designed to rein in excessive levels of executive compensation and to encourage boards to adopt compensation structures that tie executive pay more closely to performance. Although the literature is mixed, many studies question whether the statute has had the desired effect. Shareholders at most companies overwhelmingly approve the compensation packages, and pay levels continue to be high. Although a lack of …
Standing Voting Instructions: Empowering The Excluded Retail Investor, Jill E. Fisch
Standing Voting Instructions: Empowering The Excluded Retail Investor, Jill E. Fisch
All Faculty Scholarship
Despite the increasing importance of shareholder voting, regulators have paid little attention to the rights of retail investors who own approximately 30% of publicly traded companies but who vote less than 30% of their shares. A substantial factor contributing to this low turnout is the antiquated mechanism by which retail investors vote. The federal proxy voting rules place primary responsibility for facilitating retail voting in the hands of custodial brokers who have limited incentives to develop workable procedures, and current regulatory restrictions impede market-based innovation that incorporate technological innovations.
One of the most promising such innovations is standing voting instructions …
Consequences To Directors Of Shareholder Activism, Sa-Pyung Sean Shin, Sa-Pyung Sean Shin, Suraj Srinivasan
Consequences To Directors Of Shareholder Activism, Sa-Pyung Sean Shin, Sa-Pyung Sean Shin, Suraj Srinivasan
Research Collection School Of Accountancy
Using a comprehensive sample for 2004–2012, we examine the impact of shareholder activist campaigns on the careers of directors of targeted firms. We find that activism is associated with directors being almost twice as likely to leave—and performance-sensitivity of turnover being higher over the subsequent two-year period. Our evidence suggests that director turnover occurs even without shareholder activists engaging in, let alone winning, proxy contests and, in contrast to most prior research, director election results matter. Overall, our evidence suggests that shareholder activism, even in the absence of proxy fights, is associated with greater accountability for independent directors.
The Long Road Back: Business Roundtable And The Future Of Sec Rulemaking, Jill E. Fisch
The Long Road Back: Business Roundtable And The Future Of Sec Rulemaking, Jill E. Fisch
All Faculty Scholarship
The Securities and Exchange Commission has suffered a number of recent setbacks in areas ranging from enforcement policy to rulemaking. The DC Circuit’s 2011 Business Roundtable decision is one of the most serious, particularly in light of the heavy rulemaking obligations imposed on the SEC by Dodd-Frank and the JOBS Act. The effectiveness of the SEC in future rulemaking and the ability of its rules to survive legal challenge are currently under scrutiny.
This article critically evaluates the Business Roundtable decision in the context of the applicable statutory and structural constraints on SEC rulemaking. Toward that end, the essay questions …
Who Calls The Shots?: How Mutual Funds Vote On Director Elections, Stephen J. Choi, Jill E. Fisch, Marcel Kahan
Who Calls The Shots?: How Mutual Funds Vote On Director Elections, Stephen J. Choi, Jill E. Fisch, Marcel Kahan
All Faculty Scholarship
Shareholder voting has become an increasingly important focus of corporate governance, and mutual funds control a substantial percentage of shareholder voting power. The manner in which mutual funds exercise that power, however, is poorly understood. In particular, because neither mutual funds nor their advisors are beneficial owners of their portfolio holdings, there is concern that mutual fund voting may be uninformed or tainted by conflicts of interest. These concerns, if true, hamper the potential effectiveness of regulatory reforms such as proxy access and say on pay. This article analyzes mutual fund voting decisions in uncontested director elections. We find that …
The Destructive Ambiguity Of Federal Proxy Access, Jill E. Fisch
The Destructive Ambiguity Of Federal Proxy Access, Jill E. Fisch
All Faculty Scholarship
After almost seventy years of debate, on August 25, 2010, the SEC adopted a federal proxy access rule. This Article examines the new rule and concludes that, despite the prolonged rule-making effort, the new rule is ambiguous in its application and unlikely to increase shareholder input into the composition of corporate boards. More troubling is the SEC’s ambiguous justification for its rule which is neither grounded in state law nor premised on a normative vision of the appropriate role of shareholder nominations in corporate governance. Although the federal proxy access rule drew an unprecedented number of comment letters and is …
Inside-Out Corporate Governance, David A. Skeel Jr., Vijit Chahar, Alexander Clark, Mia Howard, Bijun Huang, Federico Lasconi, A.G. Leventhal, Matthew Makover, Randi Milgrim, David Payne, Romy Rahme, Nikki Sachdeva, Zachary Scott
Inside-Out Corporate Governance, David A. Skeel Jr., Vijit Chahar, Alexander Clark, Mia Howard, Bijun Huang, Federico Lasconi, A.G. Leventhal, Matthew Makover, Randi Milgrim, David Payne, Romy Rahme, Nikki Sachdeva, Zachary Scott
All Faculty Scholarship
Until late in the twentieth century, internal corporate governance—that is, decision making by the principal constituencies of the firm—was clearly distinct from outside oversight by regulators, auditors and credit rating agencies, and markets. With the 1980s takeover wave and hedge funds’ and equity funds’ more recent involvement in corporate governance, the distinction between inside and outside governance has eroded. The tools of inside governance are now routinely employed by governance outsiders, intertwining the two traditional modes of governance. We argue in this Article that the shift has created a new governance paradigm, which we call inside-out corporate governance.
Using the …
Director Elections And The Role Of Proxy Advisors, Stephen Choi, Jill E. Fisch, Marcel Kahan
Director Elections And The Role Of Proxy Advisors, Stephen Choi, Jill E. Fisch, Marcel Kahan
All Faculty Scholarship
Using a dataset of proxy recommendations and voting results for uncontested director elections from 2005 and 2006 at S&P 1500 companies, we examine how advisors make their recommendations. Of the four firms we study, Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), Proxy Governance (PGI), Glass Lewis (GL), and Egan Jones (EJ), ISS has the largest market share and is widely regarded as the most influential. We find that the four proxy advisory firms differ substantially from each other both in their willingness to issue a withhold recommendation and in the factors that affect their recommendation. It is not clear that these differences, or …
A Comparative Analysis Of The Legal Obstacles To Institutional Investor Activism In Europe And In The Us (Pdf Format), Paolo Santella, Enrico Baffi, Carlo Drago, Dino Lattuca
A Comparative Analysis Of The Legal Obstacles To Institutional Investor Activism In Europe And In The Us (Pdf Format), Paolo Santella, Enrico Baffi, Carlo Drago, Dino Lattuca
Paolo Santella
No abstract provided.
A Comparative Analysis Of The Legal Obstacles To Institutional Investor Activism In Europe And In The Us (Pdf Format), Paolo Santella, Enrico Baffi, Carlo Drago, Dino Lattuca
A Comparative Analysis Of The Legal Obstacles To Institutional Investor Activism In Europe And In The Us (Pdf Format), Paolo Santella, Enrico Baffi, Carlo Drago, Dino Lattuca
Carlo Drago
No abstract provided.
A Comparative Analysis Of The Legal Obstacles To Institutional Investor Activism In Europe And In The Us (Pdf Format), Paolo Santella, Enrico Baffi, Carlo Drago, Dino Lattuca
A Comparative Analysis Of The Legal Obstacles To Institutional Investor Activism In Europe And In The Us (Pdf Format), Paolo Santella, Enrico Baffi, Carlo Drago, Dino Lattuca
Paolo Santella
No abstract provided.
A Comparative Analysis Of The Legal Obstacles To Institutional Investor Activism In Europe And In The Us (Pdf Format), Paolo Santella, Enrico Baffi, Carlo Drago, Dino Lattuca
A Comparative Analysis Of The Legal Obstacles To Institutional Investor Activism In Europe And In The Us (Pdf Format), Paolo Santella, Enrico Baffi, Carlo Drago, Dino Lattuca
Carlo Drago
No abstract provided.
A Comparative Analysis Of The Legal Obstacles To Institutional Investor Activism In Europe And In The Us (Powerpoint), Paolo Santella, Enrico Baffi, Carlo Drago, Dino Lattuca
A Comparative Analysis Of The Legal Obstacles To Institutional Investor Activism In Europe And In The Us (Powerpoint), Paolo Santella, Enrico Baffi, Carlo Drago, Dino Lattuca
Carlo Drago
No abstract provided.