Corporate Governance

ECCE has started and completed a number of research projects in the context of corporate governance and shareholder activism. Institutional investors increasingly scrutinize the corporate governance quality of the companies they invest in. In the past decade, these investors have also intensified their right to vote on annual shareholder meetings. Some investors even go one step further by engaging, directly or indirectly, with company management on governance and related issues. ECCE has the ambition to help understand these new developments better, thereby contributing to both the academic literature and the global investor community. 

Good examples are papers on the proxy voting process, the filing of class action lawsuits, the effectiveness of engagement between investors and companies, the determination of executive compensation, the relation between leverage and corporate governance, and the market for corporate directors and committee members.

• The Geography of Shareholder Engagement
  

  Working paper

  07-05-13 | Rob Bauer | Gordon Clark | Michael Viehs | In this ECCE working paper, we study the global corporate engagement activities of a large UK-based asset manager from 2006 to 2011. Using proprietary data on these activities, we find that corporate engagements "behind-the-scenes" are frequently used to change corporate behavior. We show that geography is an important determinant for the occurrence of such engagements: UK firms receive significantly more engagements than their foreign counterparts. This finding...

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  • The Geography of Shareholder Engagement
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• Kees Koedijk

  ECCE Research Fellow

  

  Kees Koedijk is professor Financial Management at Tilburg University, and dean of the Tilburg School of Economics and Management. Kees Koedijk is an expert in financial economics and financial institutions. His research focuses on Macro and International Finance, Portfolio Management and Socially Responsible Investment, Risk Tolerance and Emotion. Sustainability is...

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• Aleksandar Andonov

  ECCE PhD Student

  

  Aleksandar Andonov is a PhD Candidate in Finance at Maastricht University, where he also teaches master courses on institutional investors and behavioral finance, and bachelor courses on investments. In his doctoral work, Aleksandar focuses on institutional investors, in particular pension funds and the money management industry, investigating the asset allocation...

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