We study 134 vote-no campaigns and 1,198 shareholder proposals related to executive pay between 1997 and 2007. Union pension funds sponsor most of these initiatives, yet their targeting criteria do not appear to reflect labor-related motives. Shareholders favor proposals related to the...

We examine the effect of say on pay regulation in the UK. Consistent with the view that shareholders regard say on pay as a value-creating mechanism, the regulation's announcement triggered a positive stock price reaction at firms with weak penalties for poor performance. UK firms responded to...

We study whether outside directors are held accountable for poor monitoring of executive compensation by examining the reputation penalties to directors of firms involved in the option backdating (BD) scandal of 2006–2007. We find that, at firms involved in BD, significant penalties accrued to...

The literature on shareholder voting has mostly focused on the influence of proxy advisors on shareholder votes. We exploit a unique empirical setting enabling us to provide a direct estimate of management’s influence. Analyzing shareholder votes on the frequency of future say on pay votes, we...

In recent years boards have become significantly more likely to implement non-binding, majority-vote (MV) shareholder proposals. Using a sample of 620 MV proposals between 1997 and 2004, we find that shareholder pressure (e.g., the voting outcome and the influence of the proponent) and the type...