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  • February 2013
  • Article
  • Journal of Law & Economics

Does Shareholder Proxy Access Improve Firm Value? Evidence from the Business Roundtable Challenge

By: Bo Becker, Guhan Subramanian and Daniel B. Bergstresser
  • Format:Print
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Abstract

We use the Business Roundtable's challenge to the SEC's 2010 proxy access rule as a natural experiment to measure the value of shareholder proxy access. We find that firms that would have been most vulnerable to proxy access, as measured by institutional ownership and activist institutional ownership in particular, lost value on October 4, 2010, when the SEC unexpectedly announced that it would delay implementation of the Rule in response to the Business Roundtable challenge. We also examine intra-day returns and find that the value loss occurred just after the SEC's announcement on October 4. We find similar results on July 22, 2011, when the D.C. Circuit ruled in favor of the Business Roundtable. These findings are consistent with the view that financial markets placed a positive value on shareholder access, as implemented in the SEC's 2010 Rule.

Keywords

Financial Markets; Business and Shareholder Relations

Citation

Becker, Bo, Guhan Subramanian, and Daniel B. Bergstresser. "Does Shareholder Proxy Access Improve Firm Value? Evidence from the Business Roundtable Challenge." Journal of Law & Economics 56, no. 1 (February 2013): 127–160.
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About The Author

Guhan Subramanian

Negotiation, Organizations & Markets
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