The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu The leading online blog in the fields of corporate governance and financial regulation. Fri, 08 May 2026 11:32:19 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.8 https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/cropped-photography-4-e1706898544564-1-32x32.png Those Short-Sighted Attacks on Quarterly Earnings – The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu 32 32 Those Short-Sighted Attacks on Quarterly Earnings https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2015/10/08/those-short-sighted-attacks-on-quarterly-earnings/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=those-short-sighted-attacks-on-quarterly-earnings https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2015/10/08/those-short-sighted-attacks-on-quarterly-earnings/#comments Thu, 08 Oct 2015 19:16:35 +0000 https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/?p=71759?d=20230310125846EST Posted by Robert C. Pozen and Mark J. Roe, on Thursday, October 8, 2015
Editor's Note:

Robert C. Pozen  is a senior lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Mark Roe is a professor at Harvard Law School. Related research from the Program on Corporate Governance includes Corporate Short-termism—In the Boardroom and in the Courtroom by Mark Roe (discussed on the Forum here); and The Myth that Insulating Boards Serves Long-Term Value by Lucian Bebchuk (discussed on the Forum here).

The clamor against so-called corporate short-term thinking has been steadily rising, with a recent focus on eliminating the quarterly earnings report that public firms issue. Quarterly reports are said to push management to forgo attractive long-term projects to meet the expectations of investors and traders who want smooth, rising earnings from quarter to quarter.

The U.K. recently eliminated mandatory quarterly reports with the goal of lengthening the time horizon for corporate business decision-making. And now Martin Lipton, a prominent U.S. corporate lawyer, has proposed that U.S. companies’ boards be allowed to choose semiannual instead of quarterly reporting. The proposal resonates in Washington circles: Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has criticized “quarterly capitalism” as has the recently departed Republican SEC Commissioner Daniel Gallagher.

But while quarterly reporting has drawbacks, the costs of going to semiannual reporting clearly outweigh any claimed benefits.

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