Yearly Archives: 2018

Corporate Governance Survey—2017 Proxy Season

Posted by David A. Bell, Fenwick & West LLP, on
Tuesday, January 2, 2018
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David A. Bell is partner in the corporate and securities group at Fenwick & West LLP. This post is based on portions of a Fenwick publication titled Corporate Governance Practices and Trends: A Comparison of Large Public Companies and Silicon Valley Companies (2017 Proxy Season); the complete survey is available here.

Since 2003, Fenwick has collected a unique body of information on the corporate governance practices of publicly traded companies that is useful for Silicon Valley companies and publicly‑traded technology and life science companies across the U.S. as well as public companies and their advisors generally. Fenwick’s annual survey covers a variety of corporate governance practices and data for the companies included in the Standard & Poor’s 100 Index (S&P 100) and the technology and life science companies included in the Silicon Valley 150 Index (SV 150). [1]

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Analysis of Fund Voting at Utilities Companies

Posted by Casey Aspin, Preventable Surprises, on
Tuesday, January 2, 2018
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Casey Aspin is Communications Director at Preventable Surprises. This post is based on a recent publication authored by Ms. Aspin. Related research from the Program on Corporate Governance includes The Agency Problems of Institutional Investors by Lucian Bebchuk, Alma Cohen, and Scott Hirst, and Social Responsibility Resolutions by Scott Hirst (discussed on the Forum here).

Investors stampeded into passive strategies after the 2008 financial crisis, triggering an intense concentration in control of US assets. The top five fund complexes managed almost half of the $19.2 trillion sitting in mutual fund and ETF accounts in 2016, according to the Investment Company Institute. [1]

With increased control of the stocks and bonds of corporate America comes increased scrutiny of how investors use their leverage with the companies whose stocks they own. This is particularly true during proxy season, when the votes cast by the largest investors can conflict with the wishes of the clients whose proxies they are voting, raising questions about fiduciary duty.

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Pre-IPO Analyst Coverage: Hype or Information Production?

Posted by Jay R. Ritter (University of Florida), on
Tuesday, January 2, 2018
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Jay R. Ritter is the Cordell Eminent Scholar at the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business. This post is based on a recent paper authored by Professor Ritter; Chunxin Jia, professor at the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University; Zhen Xie, Bank of Suzhou; and Donghang Zhang, associate professor at the University of South Carolina’s Darla Moore School of Business.

From 2009-2012, China’s initial public offering (IPO) market was characterized by a regulatory environment in which the government did not control offer prices. If there was excess demand, underwriters were required to allocate shares on a pro rata basis, without favoring one group of clients over another, in contrast to the bookbuilding procedure that is widely used in the West. Furthermore, coverage by a stock before it went public by analysts working for brokerage firms not involved in the underwriting of an IPO was widespread, with an average IPO having coverage from 10 unaffiliated analysts before trading starts.

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