Managerial Response to Shareholder Empowerment: Evidence from Majority Voting Legislation Changes
54 Pages Posted: 6 Aug 2018 Last revised: 23 Sep 2019
Date Written: July 24, 2018
Abstract
This paper studies how managers react to shareholder empowerment vis-à-vis governance provisions. We show that a staggered legislative change that increases noncompliance costs in the implementation of shareholder-initiated majority voting proposals is followed by an increase in the submission of management-initiated proposals. Management adopts provisions that crowd out shareholder-initiated proposals, pre-empt shareholder-initiated changes and give management control over future voting standard amendments. The remaining firms experience a more negative market return reaction in response to close-call votes on shareholder-initiated proposals. The results jointly indicate that managers seek to preserve shareholder-value by moderating the implementation of majority voting standards.
Keywords: Corporate Governance, Majority Voting, Shareholder Activism, Management Fronting
JEL Classification: G34, G14
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation