Kathryn Judge of Columbia University documents how financial intermediaries persistently impose high fees compared to the value rendered, attributes this to political influence, and suggests countervailing policy strategies, including stoking competition and enhancing disclosure to reduce...

This paper addresses the questions whether European mutual fund managers rely on sell-side analyst information with respect to their investment decisions and whether this behavior impacts fund performance. Based on a sample of over 4,300 European mutual funds and around 1.2 million portfolio...

In the maturing Private Equity industry, investments where the Private Equity fund owns a minority of the equity – as a different form of investment – are gaining influence. Those minority investments use different instruments for value creation than classic majority investments and involve...

This is the first comprehensive study of mutual fund voting in proxy contests. Mutual funds tend to vote for dissident nominees at firms with weak operating and financial performance, and when dissidents are hedge funds. Notably, passive funds are more likely to support incumbent management than...

Do institutional investors engage with companies on corporate externalities such as greenhouse gas emissions? And if so, why? We study voting at shareholder meetings by two emblematic global investors: BlackRock, a major asset manager, and the Norway Fund, a responsible sovereign wealth fund....

We examine the information content of changes in shareholdings after private issuance of public equity (PIPE) by mutual funds that participate in PIPEs in China. The results show that the changes in shareholdings are positively related to alpha and cumulative abnormal return (CAR) for PIPE...

Do hedge fund activists tailor their campaigns to mutual fund family's preferences? And if so, does the strategy work? Using supervised machine learning on the fund family's proxy voting choices, I estimate their preferences. I find that activists align proxy communications with the preferences...

Mutual fund families increasingly hold bonds and stocks from the same firm. We study the implications of such dual holdings for corporate governance and firm decision-making. We present evidence that dual ownership allows financially distressed firms to increase investments and to refinance by...

We find that active mutual funds owning product market competitors have superior risk-adjusted returns that are not driven by industry concentration, common selection, or stock picking ability. These funds charge higher fees but also generate persistent net-of-fee returns for investors. Funds...

Passively managed funds have grown to become some of the largest shareholders in publicly traded companies, but there is considerable debate about the effects of this growth on corporate governance. The goal of this paper is to review the literature on the governance implications of passive fund...