Interim News and the Role of Proxy Voting Advice

This paper examines the information content and consequences of third-party voting advice that arrives as news at an interim stage in corporate proxy contests. We first document significant stock returns around announcements of proxy vote recommendations. We then develop a multiequation empirical procedure for disentangling the price impact of prediction effects (changes in contest outcome probabilities) from the price impact of certification effects (changes in outcome-contingent valuations). Both effects are present in the data: Voting advice is both predictive about contest outcomes and informative about the ability of dissidents to add value. Consequently, proxy advice plays a dual informational role