ECGI Annual Members’ Meeting 2020
- 15 October 2020
- •
- Online
2020 ECGI Annual Members’ Meeting
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Hosted by Swedish House of Finance
15 October | Online
About the Event:
This event was co-sponsored by the Swedish House of Finance (SHoF) at Stockholm School of Economics, the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI) and the European Corporate Governance Research Foundation (ECGRF). It brought together senior academics and thought-leaders in business to discuss a range of important topics.
Open to the public:
The 2020 Wallenberg Lecture (15 October)
Panel Discussion (15 October)
Prize Sessions (15 October)
ECGI Members only:
ECGI General Assembly Meeting (15 October) | Download programme
Sustainable Finance Conference (16 and 17 October) | see separate programme
Supported by:
Thursday 15 October 2020
ECGI General Assembly Meeting (members only)
Break
The 2020 Wallenberg Lecture (public event)- 'The Relative Effectiveness of Exit and Voice Strategies'
Speakers:
Discussant:
The 2020 Wallenberg Lecture (public event)- 'The Relative Effectiveness of Exit and Voice Strategies'
About the Lecture
'The Relative Effectiveness of Exit and Voice Strategies'
In recent years, companies have come under increasing stakeholder pressure to pursue environmental and social goals. At the same time a growing academic literature has argued that the usual presumption that firms should maximize profit or market value is no longer valid in a world where, as result of political failures either at the national or international level, externalities are not well-controlled. In his talk, Prof. Hart considered the relative effectiveness of exit (divestment and boycott) and voice (engagement) strategies in promoting socially desirable outcomes in companies. He argued that in a competitive world exit is less effective than voice in pushing firms to act in a socially responsible manner. He also discussed what social and legal considerations might sometimes make exit preferable to voice.
The talk was based on the ECGI Working Paper 694/2020: Eleonora Broccardo, Oliver Hart, Luigi Zingales Exit vs. Voice (01 Sep 2020) Available at ECGI: https://ecgi.global/working-paper/exit-vs-voice
Speakers
Discussants
Takeover Bids vs. Proxy Fights in Contests for Corporate Control
This paper evaluates the primary mechanisms for changing management or obtaining control in publicly traded corporations with dispersed ownership....
Read more
The New Corporate Governance
In the last few years, there has been a dramatic increase in shareholder engagement on environmental and social issues. In some cases shareholders are...
Read more
Debt Enforcement Around the World
We present insolvency practitioners from 88 countries with an identical case of a hotel about to default on its debt, and ask them to describe in detail how...
Read more
Exit vs. Voice
We study the relative effectiveness of exit (divestment and boycott) and voice (engagement) strategies in promoting socially desirable outcomes in...
Read more
Private Sanctions
We survey a representative sample of the U.S. population to understand stakeholders’ desire to see their firms exit Russia after the invasion of...
Read more
Companies Should Maximize Shareholder Welfare Not Market Value
What is the appropriate objective function for a firm? We analyze this question for the case where shareholders are prosocial and externalities are not...
Read moreECGI Working Paper Prize Sessions (public event):
Aberdeen Standard Investments (Finance Prize): Picking Friends Before Picking (Proxy) Fights: How Mutual Fund Voting Shapes Proxy Contests
Speakers:
Aberdeen Standard Investments (Finance Prize): Picking Friends Before Picking (Proxy) Fights: How Mutual Fund Voting Shapes Proxy Contests
Please see link below to the ECGI finance working paper 601/2019.
Picking Friends Before Picking (Proxy) Fights: How Mutual Fund Voting Shapes Proxy Contests
Speakers
Wolf Pack Activism
Blockholder monitoring is central to corporate governance, but blockholders large enough to exercise significant unilateral influence are rare....
Read more
Liquidity and Governance
Is greater trading liquidity good or bad for corporate governance? We address this question both theoretically and empirically. We solve a model...
Read more
Outsourcing Corporate Governance: Conflicts of Interest and Competition in the Proxy Advisory Industry
Proxy advisors, private firms that help institutional investors decide how to vote their shares, play an extremely powerful role in shaping corporate...
Read more
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...
Read more
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...
Read more
Shareholder Monitoring Through Voting: New Evidence from Proxy Contests
We present the first comprehensive study of mutual fund voting in proxy contests. Among contests where voting takes place, passive funds are 10...
Read more
Activism, Strategic Trading, and Liquidity
We analyze dynamic trading by an activist investor who can expend costly effort to affect firm value. We obtain the equilibrium in closed form for a...
Read more
Governance by Persuasion: Hedge Fund Activism and the Market for Corporate Influence
Hedge fund activism refers to the phenomenon where hedge fund investors acquire a strict minority block of shares in a target firm and then attempt to...
Read moreCleary Gottlieb Hamilton & Steen (Law Prize): The Grip of Nationalism on Corporate Law
Speakers:
Cleary Gottlieb Hamilton & Steen (Law Prize): The Grip of Nationalism on Corporate Law
Please see link below to the ECGI law working paper 437/2019.
Speakers
The New Corporate Law of Corporate Groups
This Article examines how corporate law treats legal entity boundaries in groups of companies. This is a critical question given that large...
Read more
Regulatory Dualism as a Development Strategy: Corporate Reform in Brazil, the U.S., and the EU
Countries pursuing economic development confront a fundamental obstacle. Reforms that increase the size of the overall pie are blocked by powerful...
Read more
The Grip of Nationalism on Corporate Law
Economic nationalism has played a major, but overlooked, role in the evolution of corporate law around the world. The historical experiences of several...
Read more
Controlling Shareholders in the Twenty-First Century: Complicating Corporate Governance Beyond Agency Costs
By the end of the twentieth century, the then-dominant literature on “law and finance” assumed that concentrated ownership was a product of...
Read more
Governance Challenges of Listed State-Owned Enterprises around the World: National Experiences and a Framework for Reform
Despite predictions of their demise in the aftermath of the collapse of socialist economies in Eastern Europe, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are very...
Read more
RPTs in SOEs: Tunneling, Propping, and Policy Channeling
This essay, prepared for a volume on related-party transactions (RPTs), explores the economic, legal and policy challenges associated with RPTs in...
Read more
Corruption and Controlling Shareholders
Controlling shareholders have been directly involved in some of the largest and most consequential bribery scandals in the world over the course of the...
Read more
The Evolution of Shareholder Voting Rights: Separation of Ownership and Consumption
The nineteenth century saw the standardization and rapid spread of the modern business corporation around the world. Yet those early corporations...
Read moreClosing Remarks
Speakers
Presentations
The 2020 Wallenberg Lecture (public event)- 'The Relative Effectiveness of Exit and Voice Strategies'
The 2020 Wallenberg Lecture (public event)- 'The Relative Effectiveness of Exit and Voice Strategies'
About the Lecture
'The Relative Effectiveness of Exit and Voice Strategies'
In recent years, companies have come under increasing stakeholder pressure to pursue environmental and social goals. At the same time a growing academic literature has argued that the usual presumption that firms should maximize profit or market value is no longer valid in a world where, as result of political failures either at the national or international level, externalities are not well-controlled. In his talk, Prof. Hart considered the relative effectiveness of exit (divestment and boycott) and voice (engagement) strategies in promoting socially desirable outcomes in companies. He argued that in a competitive world exit is less effective than voice in pushing firms to act in a socially responsible manner. He also discussed what social and legal considerations might sometimes make exit preferable to voice.
The talk was based on the ECGI Working Paper 694/2020: Eleonora Broccardo, Oliver Hart, Luigi Zingales Exit vs. Voice (01 Sep 2020) Available at ECGI: https://ecgi.global/working-paper/exit-vs-voice
Speakers
Discussants
Takeover Bids vs. Proxy Fights in Contests for Corporate Control
This paper evaluates the primary mechanisms for changing management or obtaining control in publicly traded corporations with dispersed ownership....
Read more
Exit vs. Voice
We study the relative effectiveness of exit (divestment and boycott) and voice (engagement) strategies in promoting socially desirable outcomes in...
Read more
Private Sanctions
We survey a representative sample of the U.S. population to understand stakeholders’ desire to see their firms exit Russia after the invasion of...
Read more
The New Corporate Governance
In the last few years, there has been a dramatic increase in shareholder engagement on environmental and social issues. In some cases shareholders are...
Read more
Companies Should Maximize Shareholder Welfare Not Market Value
What is the appropriate objective function for a firm? We analyze this question for the case where shareholders are prosocial and externalities are not...
Read moreDebt Enforcement Around the World
We present insolvency practitioners from 88 countries with an identical case of a hotel about to default on its debt, and ask them to describe in detail how...
Read more
Aberdeen Standard Investments (Finance Prize): Picking Friends Before Picking (Proxy) Fights: How Mutual Fund Voting Shapes Proxy Contests
Please see link below to the ECGI finance working paper 601/2019.
Picking Friends Before Picking (Proxy) Fights: How Mutual Fund Voting Shapes Proxy Contests
Speakers
Liquidity and Governance
Is greater trading liquidity good or bad for corporate governance? We address this question both theoretically and empirically. We solve a model...
Read more
Governance by Persuasion: Hedge Fund Activism and the Market for Corporate Influence
Hedge fund activism refers to the phenomenon where hedge fund investors acquire a strict minority block of shares in a target firm and then attempt to...
Read more
Hedge Fund Activism, Corporate Governance, and Firm Performance
Using a large hand-collected dataset from 2001 to 2006, we find that activist hedge funds in the U.S. propose strategic, operational, and financial...
Read more
Picking Friends Before Picking (Proxy) Fights: How Mutual Fund Voting Shapes Proxy Contests
This paper provides the first comprehensive study of mutual fund voting in proxy contests. Funds tend to vote against incumbent management at firms with...
Read moreOutsourcing Corporate Governance: Conflicts of Interest and Competition in the Proxy Advisory Industry
Proxy advisors, private firms that help institutional investors decide how to vote their shares, play an extremely powerful role in shaping corporate...
Read more
Shareholder Monitoring Through Voting: New Evidence from Proxy Contests
We present the first comprehensive study of mutual fund voting in proxy contests. Among contests where voting takes place, passive funds are 10...
Read moreCleary Gottlieb Hamilton & Steen (Law Prize): The Grip of Nationalism on Corporate Law
Cleary Gottlieb Hamilton & Steen (Law Prize): The Grip of Nationalism on Corporate Law
Please see link below to the ECGI law working paper 437/2019.
Speakers
Foundations of Corporate Law
This paper is the first chapter of the third edition of The Anatomy of Corporate Law: A Comparative and Functional Approach, by Reinier Kraakman, John...
Read more
The Grip of Nationalism on Corporate Law
Economic nationalism has played a major, but overlooked, role in the evolution of corporate law around the world. The historical experiences of several...
Read more
The Evolution of Shareholder Voting Rights: Separation of Ownership and Consumption
The nineteenth century saw the standardization and rapid spread of the modern business corporation around the world. Yet those early corporations...
Read more
Controlling Shareholders in the Twenty-First Century: Complicating Corporate Governance Beyond Agency Costs
By the end of the twentieth century, the then-dominant literature on “law and finance” assumed that concentrated ownership was a product of...
Read more
RPTs in SOEs: Tunneling, Propping, and Policy Channeling
This essay, prepared for a volume on related-party transactions (RPTs), explores the economic, legal and policy challenges associated with RPTs in...
Read more
Regulatory Dualism as a Development Strategy: Corporate Reform in Brazil, the U.S., and the EU
Countries pursuing economic development confront a fundamental obstacle. Reforms that increase the size of the overall pie are blocked by powerful...
Read more
The Rise of International Corporate Law
Comparative corporate governance has focused either on prevailing differences across legal systems, or on spontaneous legal transplants of foreign...
Read more
The New Corporate Law of Corporate Groups
This Article examines how corporate law treats legal entity boundaries in groups of companies. This is a critical question given that large...
Read more