Sky Blog
Since the late 1990s, activist hedge funds have become the dominant face of shareholder activism, essentially taking over an arena that was once dominated by pension funds and mutual funds. Hedge fund activism (HFA) has attracted substantial public attention because …
The propensity to favor local investments is not restricted to individual investors alone but is also common among institutional investors. It also exists in common equity and private equity portfolios of state public pension funds. This phenomenon, known as local …
Invigorating the shareholder proposal process is a top priority for corporate governance reformers. But the possibility that self-interested shareholders could use proposals to harass or pressure managers to accommodate their interests is a cause for concern. Union shareholders attract more …
Do managers seek control of the firm, or the level of ownership consistent with entrenchment? Entrenched managers own shares within a range which is high enough to give them control, but sufficiently low to make other shareholders bear the brunt …
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) requires management and auditors to opine on the effectiveness of internal controls for many public companies. One intention of SOX is to improve the reliability of information public companies provide to the financial markets …
Any successful fraudster can tell you the golden rule of his trade: if no one notices your fraud, keep doing it. The possibility to repeat past success makes fraud very costly: for example, health care fraud accounts for one to …
The Literature on agency theory is largely focused on relationships in which one party (the principal) engages another party (the agent) to perform some service on the principal’s behalf, the performance of which involves delegating some decision making authority to …
Understanding why firms exist has long been a preoccupation of economists. The leading answers—the ones that have won people Nobel prizes or put them on the short list[1]—focus on the ability of firms to get things done by …
In addition to change-of-control benefits (“golden parachutes”), executives often negotiate for personal side-payment at the same time that they are bargaining with an acquirer over the sale of their firm. Side-payments differ from golden parachutes in that they are negotiated …