IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jlawec/doi10.1086-682910.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Outsourcing Shareholder Voting to Proxy Advisory Firms

Author

Listed:
  • David F. Larcker
  • Allan L. McCall
  • Gaizka Ormazabal

Abstract

This paper examines the economic consequences of institutional investors outsourcing research and voting decisions in public company elections to proxy advisory firms. We investigate the implications of these decisions in the context of shareholder say-on-pay voting required in 2011 under the Dodd-Frank Act. We find three primary results: proxy advisory firm recommendations have a substantive impact on say-on-pay voting outcomes, a substantial number of firms change their compensation programs in the time period before formal shareholder votes in a manner consistent with the features known to be favored by proxy advisory firms in an effort to avoid negative voting recommendations, and the stock market reaction to these compensation program changes is statistically negative. These results suggest that outsourcing voting to proxy advisory firms appears to have the unintended economic consequence that boards of directors are induced to make choices that decrease shareholder value.

Suggested Citation

  • David F. Larcker & Allan L. McCall & Gaizka Ormazabal, 2015. "Outsourcing Shareholder Voting to Proxy Advisory Firms," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 58(1), pages 173-204.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jlawec:doi:10.1086/682910
    DOI: 10.1086/682910
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/682910
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/682910
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/682910?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Yonca Ertimur & Fabrizio Ferri & David Oesch, 2013. "Shareholder Votes and Proxy Advisors: Evidence from Say on Pay," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(5), pages 951-996, December.
    2. Cai, Jie & Walkling, Ralph A., 2011. "Shareholders’ Say on Pay: Does It Create Value?," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 46(2), pages 299-339, April.
    3. Larcker, David F. & Ormazabal, Gaizka & Taylor, Daniel J., 2011. "The market reaction to corporate governance regulation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(2), pages 431-448, August.
    4. Larcker, David F. & McCall, Allan L. & Ormazabal, Gaizka, 2013. "Proxy advisory firms and stock option repricing," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 149-169.
    5. Carr Bettis & John Bizjak & Jeffrey Coles & Swaminathan Kalpathy, 2010. "Stock and Option Grants with Performance-based Vesting Provisions," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(10), pages 3849-3888, October.
    6. Larcker, David F., 1983. "The association between performance plan adoption and corporate capital investment," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 3-30, April.
    7. Murphy, Kevin J., 1999. "Executive compensation," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 38, pages 2485-2563, Elsevier.
    8. K. J. Martijn Cremers & Roberta Romano, 2011. "Institutional Investors and Proxy Voting on Compensation Plans: The Impact of the 2003 Mutual Fund Voting Disclosure Rule," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 13(1), pages 220-268.
    9. Bushee, BJ & Noe, CF, 2000. "Corporate disclosure practices, institutional investors, and stock return volatility," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38, pages 171-202.
    10. Jennifer E. Bethel & Stuart L. Gillan, 2002. "The Impact of the Institutional and Regulatory Environment on Shareholder Voting," Financial Management, Financial Management Association, vol. 31(4), Winter.
    11. Jie Cai & Jacqueline L. Garner & Ralph A. Walkling, 2009. "Electing Directors," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(5), pages 2389-2421, October.
    12. Morgan, Angela & Poulsen, Annette & Wolf, Jack, 2006. "The evolution of shareholder voting for executive compensation schemes," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 715-737, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Larcker, David F. & McCall, Allan L. & Ormazabal, Gaizka, 2012. "The Economic Consequences of Proxy Advisor Say-on-Pay Voting Policies," Research Papers 2105, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    2. Ferri, Fabrizio & Oesch, David, 2013. "Management Influence on Investors: Evidence from Shareholder Votes on the Frequency of Say on Pay," Working Papers on Finance 1329, University of St. Gallen, School of Finance.
    3. Brunarski, Kelly R. & Campbell, T. Colin & Harman, Yvette S., 2015. "Evidence on the outcome of Say-On-Pay votes: How managers, directors, and shareholders respond," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 132-149.
    4. Nadya Malenko & Yao Shen, 2016. "The Role of Proxy Advisory Firms: Evidence from a Regression-Discontinuity Design," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 29(12), pages 3394-3427.
    5. Morgan, Angela & Poulsen, Annette & Wolf, Jack & Yang, Tina, 2011. "Mutual funds as monitors: Evidence from mutual fund voting," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 914-928, September.
    6. Yonca Ertimur & Fabrizio Ferri & David Oesch, 2013. "Shareholder Votes and Proxy Advisors: Evidence from Say on Pay," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(5), pages 951-996, December.
    7. Ng, Lilian & Sibilkov, Valeriy & Wang, Qinghai & Zaiats, Nataliya, 2011. "Does shareholder approval requirement of equity compensation plans matter?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(5), pages 1510-1530.
    8. Ormazabal, Gaizka, 2018. "The Role of Stakeholders in Corporate Governance: A View from Accounting Research," CEPR Discussion Papers 12775, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. Steve Sauerwald & J. (Hans) Van Oosterhout & Marc Van Essen, 2016. "Expressive Shareholder Democracy: A Multilevel Study of Shareholder Dissent in 15 Western European Countries," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(4), pages 520-551, June.
    10. Danial Hemmings & Lynn Hodgkinson & Gwion Williams, 2020. "It's OK to pay well, if you write well: The effects of remuneration disclosure readability," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(5-6), pages 547-586, May.
    11. Laura Henning, 2015. "Shareholder voting and merger returns," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 29(4), pages 337-363, November.
    12. Ricardo Correa & Ugur Lel, 2013. "Say on pay laws, executive compensation, CEO pay slice, and firm value around the world," International Finance Discussion Papers 1084, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    13. Carola Frydman & Dirk Jenter, 2010. "CEO Compensation," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 2(1), pages 75-102, December.
    14. Christopher S. Armstrong & Ian D. Gow & David F. Larcker, 2013. "The Efficacy of Shareholder Voting: Evidence from Equity Compensation Plans," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(5), pages 909-950, December.
    15. Yonca Ertimur & Fabrizio Ferri & David Oesch, 2018. "Understanding Uncontested Director Elections," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(7), pages 3400-3420, July.
    16. Correa, Ricardo & Lel, Ugur, 2016. "Say on pay laws, executive compensation, pay slice, and firm valuation around the world," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(3), pages 500-520.
    17. Larcker, David F. & McCall, Allan L. & Ormazabal, Gaizka, 2013. "Proxy advisory firms and stock option repricing," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 149-169.
    18. Gulen, Huseyin & O'Brien, William J., 2017. "Option repricing, corporate governance, and the effect of shareholder empowerment," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(2), pages 389-415.
    19. Denes, Matthew R. & Karpoff, Jonathan M. & McWilliams, Victoria B., 2017. "Thirty years of shareholder activism: A survey of empirical research," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 405-424.
    20. Nicola Cucari, 2019. "Determinants of say on pay vote: a configurational analysis," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 15(3), pages 837-856, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucp:jlawec:doi:10.1086/682910. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JLE .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.