Who Calls the Shots?: How Mutual Funds Vote on Director Elections

50 Pages Posted: 23 Aug 2011 Last revised: 23 Feb 2018

See all articles by Stephen J. Choi

Stephen J. Choi

New York University School of Law

Jill E. Fisch

University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School; European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI)

Marcel Kahan

New York University School of Law; European Corporate Governance Institute

Date Written: 2013

Abstract

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 mutual funds use a variety of strategies to economize on the costs of making voting decisions, including having funds in the same fund family vote in lockstep, voting virtually always in accordance with management recommendations, and voting virtually always in accordance with recommendations of ISS. Smaller fund families employ these strategies to a greater extent than larger families.

We further adduce evidence on how ISS recommendations affect fund voting. Funds that account for less than 10% of the assets in our sample exhibit a strong tendency to follow ISS recommendations, a much smaller percentage than funds that virtually always follow management recommendations (approximately 25% of assets). A much larger percentage (36% of the assets) votes in accordance with ISS withhold recommendations in approximately 50% of the cases. We conclude that the influence of ISS is due more to funds’ measured evaluation of the ISS recommendations rather than to funds blindly following these recommendations.

We find no evidence that funds in families that are affiliated with commercial banks, investment banks, or insurance companies have a stronger proclivity than independent funds to vote in accordance with management recommendations or to shield their votes from criticism in order to maintain good business relations or generate new business for their affiliates.

The largest fund families - Vanguard, Fidelity, and American Funds, each of which individually accounts for roughly 11% of total mutual fund assets - vote substantially differently both from each other and from ISS recommendations. This is strong evidence of heterogeneity in the voting behavior of mutual funds in director elections.

Finally, we examine the factors associated with high (in excess of 30%) withhold votes in director elections. An ISS withhold recommendation, in conjunction with at least one of four factors - a withhold vote by Fidelity, the director missing 25% of board meetings, the company having ignored a shareholder resolution that received majority support, and a Vanguard withhold vote on outside directors with business ties to the company - is associated with a 49% probability of receiving a high withhold vote. Directors in these groups account for 48% of all directors who received high withhold votes. By contrast, an ISS withhold recommendation that is not combined with one of these factors is associated with only a 21% probability of a high withhold vote, and the general probability of a high withhold vote is a mere 2%. These findings suggest steps that companies and directors should take to try to avoid high withhold votes. They are also evidence that not all ISS recommendations have the same impact on voting outcomes.

Keywords: Corporations, securities, mutual funds, shareholder voting, corporate governance, ISS, Institutional Shareholder Services, proxy advisor recommendations, voting patterns, mutual fund families, empirical research

JEL Classification: D72, G34, K22

Suggested Citation

Choi, Stephen J. and Fisch, Jill E. and Kahan, Marcel, Who Calls the Shots?: How Mutual Funds Vote on Director Elections (2013). Harvard Business Law Review, Vol. 3, P. 35, 2013, University of Pennsylvania, Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper No. 11-28, NYU Law and Economics Research Paper No. 11-29, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1912772 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1912772

Stephen J. Choi

New York University School of Law ( email )

40 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012-1099
United States

Jill E. Fisch (Contact Author)

University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School ( email )

3501 Sansom Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
United States
215-746-3454 (Phone)
215-573-2025 (Fax)

European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI) ( email )

c/o the Royal Academies of Belgium
Rue Ducale 1 Hertogsstraat
1000 Brussels
Belgium

Marcel Kahan

New York University School of Law ( email )

40 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012-1099
United States
212-998-6268 (Phone)
212-995-4341 (Fax)

European Corporate Governance Institute ( email )

c/o the Royal Academies of Belgium
Rue Ducale 1 Hertogsstraat
1000 Brussels
Belgium

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