This paper asks the question whether dissent votes in uncontested director elections have consequences for directors. We show that, contrary to popular belief based on prior studies, shareholder votes have power and result in negative consequences for directors. Directors facing dissent are more...

We examine the structure of lending syndicates formed to provide credit to the non-financial U.S. firms between 1990 and 2007. We find a significant relationship between the level of shareholder rights (as proxied by GIndex) of the borrowing firms and composition of their lending syndicate....

Firms with greater shareholder rights have higher risk-shifting incentives. Such firms should have more concentrated loan syndicates to ensure more intensive monitoring. In the United States, the second generation antitakeover laws reduced the shareholder rights significantly. We find that loan...