Alex Edmans is professor of finance at London Business School. This post is based on his recently published book Grow the Pie. Related research from the Program on Corporate Governance includes The Myth that Insulating Boards Serves Long-Term Value by Lucian Bebchuk (discussed on the Forum here); The Long-Term Effects of Hedge Fund Activism by Lucian Bebchuk, Alon Brav, and Wei Jiang (discussed on the Forum here); Short-Termism and Capital Flows by Jesse Fried and Charles C. Y. Wang (discussed on the Forum here); and Share Repurchases, Equity Issuances, and the Optimal Design of Executive Pay, by Jesse Fried (discussed on the Forum here).
Share buybacks are one of the most controversial corporate decisions today. US Senator Elizabeth Warren claimed that “buybacks create a sugar high for the corporations. It boosts prices in the short run, but the real way to boost the value of a corporation is to invest in the future, and they are not doing that.”
That quote highlights the two main reasons why share repurchases are unpopular. First, they prevent investment—in wages, in new and better products, and in reducing carbon emissions. They seem to split the pie in favour of investors and at the expense of wider society. Second, they increase the short-term stock price, allowing a CEO to benefit by opportunistically cashing out her shares. Moreover, the CEO’s personal incentives to undertake repurchases are even broader than in Senator Warren’s quote. Buybacks increase not just the stock price but also a company’s earnings per share (EPS). That allows a CEO to hit any EPS target in her bonus contract—without boosting revenues or cutting costs, which were presumably the actions that the EPS target hoped to encourage.
Proxy Voting by ERISA Fiduciaries
More from: Nell Minow, Robert Monks, ValueEdge Advisors
Robert A.G. Monks is Chairman and Nell Minow is Vice Chair of ValueEdge Advisors. This post is based on their recent comment letter to the Department of Labor. Related research from the Program on Corporate Governance includes The Illusory Promise of Stakeholder Governance by Lucian A. Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita (discussed on the Forum here); Reconciling Fiduciary Duty and Social Conscience: The Law and Economics of ESG Investing by a Trustee by Max M. Schanzenbach and Robert H. Sitkoff (discussed on the Forum here); and Companies Should Maximize Shareholder Welfare Not Market Value by Oliver Hart and Luigi Zingales (discussed on the Forum here).
In the long, dismaying history of regulatory capture, when agencies set up to provide oversight instead issue rules entrenching and subsidizing corporate insiders, disregarding the public interest in transparency, accountability, and robust market forces, it is hard to think of an example as discreditable as this proposal on proxy voting by ERISA fiduciaries.
We object to this proposal in the strongest terms, both in substance and in process. We have signed the comment letter drafted by Keith Johnson and Jon Lukomnik and endorse it fully. This letter supplements it by adding our own perspective, including those of a former head of EBSA’s predecessor agency, PWBA. We note for the record that we have no financial ties to proxy advisors or ERISA fiduciaries and have not been paid by anyone to express these views. We trust EBSA will carefully scrutinize all comments for possible hidden conflicts of interest, which have been rampant in the DOL and SEC filings relating to proxy proposals and proxy voting.
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