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, 03 Apr 2026 11:32:39 +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 The Big Thumb on the Scale: An Overview of the Proxy Advisory Industry – The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu 32 32 The Big Thumb on the Scale: An Overview of the Proxy Advisory Industry https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2018/06/14/the-big-thumb-on-the-scale-an-overview-of-the-proxy-advisory-industry/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-big-thumb-on-the-scale-an-overview-of-the-proxy-advisory-industry https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2018/06/14/the-big-thumb-on-the-scale-an-overview-of-the-proxy-advisory-industry/#comments Thu, 14 Jun 2018 13:29:08 +0000 https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/?p=108005?d=20180614101027EDT Posted by David F. Larcker (Stanford Graduate School of Business), Brian Tayan (Stanford Graduate School of Business), and James R. Copland (Manhattan Institute), on Thursday, June 14, 2018
Editor's Note:

David F. Larcker is James Irvin Miller Professor of Accounting and Brian Tayan is a Researcher with the Corporate Governance Research Initiative at Stanford Graduate School of Business; and James R. Copland is the director of the Manhattan Institute’s Center for Legal Policy. This post is based on their recent paper.

Proxy advisory firms have significant influence over the voting decisions of institutional investors and the governance choices of publicly traded companies. However, it is not clear that the recommendations of these firms are correct and generally lead to better outcomes for companies and their shareholders. We recently published a paper on SSRN (“The Big Thumb on the Scale: An Overview of the Proxy Advisory Industry”) that provides a comprehensive review of the proxy advisory industry and the influence of these firms on voting behavior, corporate choices, and outcomes, and it outlines potential reforms for the industry. [1]

Shareholder Voting

(more…)

]]> https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2018/06/14/the-big-thumb-on-the-scale-an-overview-of-the-proxy-advisory-industry/feed/ 1