Sky Blog
Proxy advisory firms Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis recently announced updates to their U.S. proxy voting policies for the 2020 proxy season. ISS’s new policies will apply to shareholder meetings held on or after February 1, 2020 and …
In response to the sharp increase in campaigns by activist hedge funds in France and Europe generally, a French commission has conducted an extensive investigation and issued a carefully researched, reasonable and balanced report recommending regulatory and procedural changes to …
Leo E. Strine, Jr. has long had a bully pulpit in corporate law, first on Delaware’s Court of Chancery and then as chief justice of the Delaware Supreme Court. Bully pulpits are good things for the occupants but can be …
The Business Roundtable’s recent call for a commitment to long-term sustainable economic value creation has prompted a vigorous debate about the optimal corporate governance model for achieving that goal.
Certain familiar arguments have reappeared in reaction to the Business Roundtable’s …
Directors of a Delaware corporation must act in the best interest of the corporation and its shareholders.[1] Other stakeholders – such as employees, creditors, customers, and suppliers – may only be considered by directors to the extent there …
Managerial entrenchment is detrimental to shareholder value (Faleye (2007), Cohen and Wang (2013), and Cohen and Wang (2017)). Managers are able to become entrenched by making specific investments whose value is higher under their watch than under that of the …
The rise and fall of The We Company IPO bubble is one of those events that, like the subprime mortgage bubble that preceded the financial crisis, calls for an examination of market structures that could have produced such a precipitous …
Theoretical and empirical research on shareholder voting has provided many exciting insights and guidance for debates on policy and regulation. The default assumption, though, is that shareholders have strong incentives to vote for alternatives that they think are best for …
The stakes for responsible corporate stewardship have never been higher.
Corporations today account for a greater proportion of our collective productivity than ever before. Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 71 are corporations, and only 29 are countries. …
The failure of the Council of Institutional Investors to join the Business Roundtable in rejecting shareholder primacy and embracing stakeholder corporate governance is misguided. The argument that protection of stakeholders other than shareholders should be left to government regulation is …
The question that emerges from proposals to elevate a corporation’s “purpose,”[1] the call for co-determination in Senator Warren’s Accountable Capitalism Act and now the Business Roundtable’s purported elevation of stakeholder interests, is whether corporate governance is capable of …
In recent years, large asset managers have reached incredible sizes, managing trillions of dollars of assets on behalf of tens of millions of clients. The largest three – BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street – taken together (the “Big Three”), vote …
Mutual funds own approximately 30 percent of the U.S. equity market, and the Big Three fund families – Blackrock, Vanguard, and State Street – are the largest blockholders in the vast majority of large, publicly traded companies. This has made …
In a new paper, we analyze the major disconnect between the theory of corporate governance, its legal expression, and the reality of corporate ownership structures, based on an “indirect holding system” (IHS), which has evolved from complex existing technological …
As a foundational technology, blockchain creates the infrastructure for decentralized networked governance that, over time, creates the environment that enables the removal of internal and external monitoring mechanisms previously necessitated by agency problems in corporate governance. Blockchain technology facilitates a …
Understanding factors that facilitate or inhibit boards’ ability to monitor the chief executive officer (CEO) is central to corporate governance. In a recent paper, we analyze how informal relationships between directors and non-CEO executives (hereafter, internal ties) affect board effectiveness.…
The Boeing 737 Max scandal is one of the most serious corporate crises in U.S. history. While companies like Enron, Arthur Andersen, and Lehman Brothers were replaceable, Boeing is not. Consumers and airlines around the world now view the 737 …
Ownership structure is perhaps among the most significant corporate governance factors, as it determines the balance of power within a corporation and can directly affect governance practices and company behavior. In our review of CEO ownership, we focus on corporate …