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
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
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
Economic Crisis and Share Price Unpredictability: Reasons and Implications
During the recent financial crisis, there was a dramatic spike, across all industries, in the volatility of individual firm share prices after...
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
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...
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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...
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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
Diversity Washing
We provide large-sample evidence on whether U.S. publicly traded corporations opportunistically use voluntary disclosures about their commitments...
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
Synthetic Governance
Although securities regulation is distinct from corporate governance, the two fields have considerable substantive overlap. By increasing the...
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The Effect of Corporate Disclosure Regulation on Managers’ Private Communications
The SEC adopted Regulation FD (Reg FD) to address the selective disclosure by issuers of material nonpublic information. Selective disclosure results...
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Centros, California’s “Women on Boards” Statute and the Scope of Regulatory Competition
In its 1999 Centros decision, the European Court of Justice affirmed that the EU right of establishment protects a corporation’s right to select a...
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...
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Governance by Contract: The Implications for Corporate Bylaws
Boards and shareholders are increasing using charter and bylaw provisions to customize their corporate governance. Recent examples include forum...
Read more
The Broken Buck Stops Here: Embracing Sponsor Support in Money Market Fund Reform
Since the 2008 financial crisis, in which the Reserve Primary Fund “broke the buck,” money market funds (MMFs) have been the subject of ongoing...
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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
The Uncertain Stewardship Potential of Index Funds
Regulators and commentators around the world are increasingly demanding that institutional investors engage in stewardship with respect to their...
Read morePanel
Panel
Speakers
Moderator
Moderator
Speakers
Conference Documents
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
Zealous Advocates or Self-interested Actors? Assessing the Value of Plaintiffs? Law Firms in Merger Litigation
Using a hand-collected sample of 1,739 class actions that challenge the fairness of M&A transactions from the period 2003 through 2012, we examine...
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...
Read more
Shareholder Voting in an Age of Intermediary Capitalism
Shareholder voting is a key part of contemporary American corporate governance. As numerous contemporary battles between corporate management and...
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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
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 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
Loyalty Shares with Tenure Voting - Does the Default Rule Matter? Evidence from the Loi Florange Experiment
The contractual theory of the firm predicts that companies adopt charters that maximise firm value, regardless of the default rule. We test this...
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...
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China as a "National Strategic Buyer": Towards a Multilateral Regime for Cross-Border M&A
Unlike the case of cross-border trade, there is no explicit international governance regime for cross-border M&A; rather, there is a shared...
Read more
Returns to Shareholder Activism: Evidence from a Clinical Study of the Hermes U.K. Focus Fund
This article reports a unique analysis of private engagements by an activist fund. It is based on data made available to us by Hermes, the fund manager...
Read more
Returns to Hedge Fund Activism: An International Study
This paper provides evidence on the incidence, characteristics, and performance of activist engagements across countries. We find that the incidence...
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