The Realities of Stewardship for Institutional Owners, Activist Investors and Proxy Advisors
- 03 December 2013
- •
- Securities and Exchange Commission, Washington DC
The theme of the tenth conference in the series which took place in Washington D.C. at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday, 3rd December 2013 was The Realities of Stewardship for Institutional Owners, Activist Investors and Proxy Advisors.
With Lithuania holding the Presidency of the Council of the European Union, the organisers are most grateful for the support of the Lithuanian Embassy in Washington and for sponsorship of the 2013 conference by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)
Information
Tuesday, 3 December 2013
Registration and coffee
Conference Chair
Speakers:
Welcome
Speakers:
Remarks from the EU Presidency
Speakers:
Session 1 - Opening remarks
Speakers:
Session 2 - Activist Shareholders and Shareholder Value: Long Term v. Short Term
Moderator:
Briefings
Speakers:
Panel
Speakers:
Coffee and tea
Session 3 - The European perspective
Speakers:
Introduction and Q&A moderator
Moderator:
Lunch
Session 4 - SEC Commissioner's remarks
Speakers:
Session 5 - Proxy Advisors: Do they wield too much influence? Whether and how to regulate - the lessons from Europe
Moderator:
Briefings
Speakers:
Panel
Speakers:
Coffee and tea
Session 6 - Say on Pay: Is it working? How far should it go?
Moderator
Speakers:
Briefing
Speakers:
Panel
Speakers:
Session 7 - Summing up, Assessment and the Way Ahead
Speakers:
Speakers
Presentations
Conference Chair
Conference Chair
Speakers
Market Efficiency after the Financial Crisis: It?s Still a Matter of Information Costs
Compared to the worldwide financial carnage that followed the Subprime Crisis of 2007-2008, it may seem of small consequence that it is also said to have...
Read more
The Case for an Unbiased Takeover Law (with an Application to the European Union)
Takeover regulation should neither hamper nor promote takeovers, but instead allow individual companies to decide the contestability of their...
Read more
How Investors Can (and Can't) Create Social Value
Most investors have a single goal: to earn the highest financial return. These socially-neutral investors maximize their risk-adjusted returns and...
Read more
Shifting Influences on Corporate Governance: Capital Market Completeness and Policy Channeling
Corporate governance scholarship is typically portrayed as driven by single factor models, for example, shareholder value maximization, director...
Read moreWelcome
Welcome
Speakers
Remarks from the EU Presidency
Remarks from the EU Presidency
Speakers
Session 1 - Opening remarks
Session 1 - Opening remarks
Speakers
Conference Documents
Briefings
Briefings
Speakers
Conference Documents
Long-Term Economic Consequences of Hedge Fund Activist Interventions
We examine the long-term effects of interventions by activist hedge funds. Prior papers document positive equal-weighted long-term returns and...
Read more
Diversity Washing
We provide large-sample evidence on whether U.S. publicly traded corporations use voluntary disclosures about their commitments to employee...
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Board Diversity and Shareholder Voting
The lack of board diversity across gender and race has been one of the most controversial topics in corporate board governance in recent years. Given the...
Read more
Seven Gaping Holes in Our Knowledge of Corporate Governance
In Closer Look, we highlight significant “holes” in our knowledge of corporate governance. These are central issues where insufficient or...
Read more
How Much Should We Trust Staggered Difference-In-Differences Estimates?
We explain when and how staggered difference-in-differences regression estimators, commonly applied to assess the impact of policy changes, are...
Read morePanel
Panel
Speakers
Conference Documents
Session 3 - The European perspective
Session 3 - The European perspective
Speakers
Session 4 - SEC Commissioner's remarks
Session 4 - SEC Commissioner's remarks
Speakers
Conference Documents
Briefings
Briefings
Speakers
Conference Documents
Why Do Retail Investors Make Costly Mistakes? An Experiment on Mutual Fund Choice
There is mounting evidence that retail investors make predictable, costly investment mistakes, including underinvestment, naïve...
Read more
GameStop and the Reemergence of the Retail Investor
The GameStop trading frenzy in January 2021 was perhaps the highest profile example of the reemergence of capital market participation by retail...
Read more
The New Titans of Wall Street: A Theoretical Framework for Passive Investors
Passive investors—ETFs and index funds—are the most important development in modern-day capital markets, dictating trillions of dollars in...
Read more
The “Value” of a Public Benefit Corporation
We examine the “value” a PBC form provides for publicly-traded corporations. We analyze the structure of the PBC form and find that other than...
Read more
Stealth Governance: Shareholder Agreements and Private Ordering
Corporate law has embraced private ordering -- tailoring a firm’s corporate governance to meet its individual needs. Firms are increasingly...
Read more
The Shifting Tides of Merger Litigation
In 2015, Delaware made several important changes to its laws concerning merger litigation. These changes, which were made in response to a perception...
Read more
Standing Voting Instructions: Empowering the Excluded Retail Investor
Despite the increasing importance of shareholder voting, regulators have paid little attention to the rights of retail investors who own...
Read more
Promoting Corporate Diversity: The Uncertain Role of Institutional Investors
Two developments are having an impact on corporate decisions. One is the increased engagement by institutional intermediaries, and a shift in the focus...
Read morePanel
Panel
Speakers
Moderator
Moderator
Speakers
Conference Documents
The Law and Practice of Shareholder Inspection Rights: A Comparative Analysis of China and the U.S.
Shareholder inspection rights allow a shareholder to access the relevant documents of the company in which they hold an interest, so as to address the...
Read more
Corporate Darwinism: Disciplining Managers in a World with Weak Shareholder Litigation
Corporate legal scholarship largely focuses on addressing managerial agency costs. As part of this paradigm, legal scholars examine how effectively...
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
Understanding the (Ir)Relevance of Shareholder Votes on M&A Deals
Has corporate law and its bundles of fiduciary obligations become irrelevant? Over the last thirty years, the American public corporation has...
Read more
Comparing CEO Employment Contract Provisions: Differences between Australia and the U.S.
This study compares CEO employment contracts across two common law countries: the United States and Australia. Although the regulatory regimes of...
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The Rise and Fall of Delaware's Takeover Standards
The takeover standards that we learn and teach in law school, Revlon, Unocal, Weinberger, and Blasius, appear to be in decline. In this chapter for the...
Read moreBriefing
Briefing
Speakers
Conference Documents
Panel
Panel
Speakers
Conference Documents
Session 7 - Summing up, Assessment and the Way Ahead
Session 7 - Summing up, Assessment and the Way Ahead
Speakers
Principles of Financial Regulation
Inadequate regulation of the financial system is widely thought to have contributed to the financial crisis. The purpose of the book is to articulate a...
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Corporate Governance and Control
Corporate governance is concerned with the resolution of collective action problems among dispersed investors and the reconciliation of conflicts of...
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Does Mandatory Shareholder Voting Prevent Bad Acquisitions?
Shareholder voting on corporate acquisitions is controversial. In most countries acquisition decisions are delegated to boards and shareholder...
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Outsourcing Active Ownership in Japan
This paper examines active ownership in Japan by an equity ownership service, Governance for Owners Japan (GOJ). GOJ engages with...
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Hedge Fund Activism in Europe
The paper analyzes 362 European activist interventions by hedge funds, focus funds and other activist investors from 2000 to 2008. The sample includes...
Read more
Bank Resolution in Europe: the Unfinished Agenda of Structural Reform
This chapter argues that the work of the European Banking Union remains incomplete in one important respect, the structural re-organization of large...
Read more
Should Shareholders Have a Say on Acquisitions?
Shareholders of U.S. corporations have lost billions of dollars in acquisitions they never approved. In the United Kingdom the listing...
Read morePanel Discussions
Session 2 - Activist Shareholders and Shareholder Value: Long Term v. Short Term
Session 2 - Activist Shareholders and Shareholder Value: Long Term v. Short Term
Moderator
Introduction and Q&A moderator
Introduction and Q&A moderator
Moderator
Session 5 - Proxy Advisors: Do they wield too much influence? Whether and how to regulate - the lessons from Europe
Session 5 - Proxy Advisors: Do they wield too much influence? Whether and how to regulate - the lessons from Europe
Moderator