This paper surveys the empirical literature on shareholder voting, specifically on votes related to contested and uncontested director elections and on management proposals. While much of current theory depicts shareholder votes as an ineffective control on the board's decision making, the...

Defense litigation counsel are retained by target firm management to defend them in mergers and acquisition (M&A) litigation. We use hand collected data from a ten-year period (2003-2012) to examine whether the choice of defense litigation counsel affects the outcome of M&A litigation and...

Using hand-collected data, we examine the targeting of shareholder class action lawsuits in merger & acquisition (M&A) transactions, and the associations of these lawsuits with offer completion rates and takeover premia. We find that M&A offers subject to shareholder lawsuits are completed at a...

In an "activist risk arbitrage," a shareholder attempts to reshape an announced M&A through public campaigns, profi ting from improved terms. Activists target deals with low premiums, and those susceptible to managerial conflicts of interest, including going-private deals and deals upon which...