Activism

Shareholder Activism through Proxy Proposals: The European Perspective

Blockholders: A Survey of Theory and Evidence

This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on the role of blockholders (large shareholders) in corporate governance. We start with...

Competition for Flow and Short-Termism in Activism

We develop a dual-layered agency model to study blockholder monitoring by activist funds that compete for investor flow. Competition for flow affects...

Unexpected Corporate Outcomes from Hedge Fund Activism in Japan

Hedge fund activism has been identified in the USA as a driver of enduring corporate governance change and market perception. We investigate this claim...

Pandemic-Resistant Corporate Law: How to Help Companies Cope with Existential Threats and Extreme Uncertainty During the Covid-19 Crisis

This essay argues that, to address the Covid-19 crisis, in addition to creating a special temporary insolvency regime, relaxing provisions for...

Institutional Investor Activism in a Context of Concentrated Ownership and High Private Benefits of Control: the Case of Italy

This is a draft chapter for a forthcoming volume, The Research Handbook on Shareholder Power, edited by Randall Thomas and Jennifer Hill...

The Returns to Hedge Fund Activism

Hedge fund activism is a new form of arbitrage. Using a large hand-collected data set from 2001 to 2006 we find that activist hedge funds in the U.S. propose...

Shareholder Engagement on Environmental, Social, and Governance Performance

We study behind-the-scenes investor activism promoting environmental, social, and governance (ESG) improvements by means of a proprietary dataset...

The Effect of Institutional Investors' Voice on the Terms and Outcome of Freeze-out Tender Offers

We study the impact of institutional investors' “voice” on 201 going private tender offers by controlling shareholders ("freeze-out" offers) in...

Dancing with Activists

An important milestone often reached in the life of an activist engagement is entering into a “settlement” agreement between the activist and the...

Shareholder Value(s): Index Fund ESG Activism and the New Millennial Corporate Governance

Major index fund operators have been criticized as ineffective stewards of the firms in which they are now the largest shareholders. While scholars...

The Global ESG Stewardship Ecosystem

There is growing interest in the phenomenon of international or transnational corporate law. This development is marked by its complexity. It involves...