Institutional shareholders around the world increasingly use share-voting to protect their portfolio investments and improve corporate governance. However, exercising voting rights involves costly and often arcane country-specific legal rules. Efforts are under way to harmonize cross-border...

A central challenge in the regulation of controlled firms is curbing rent extraction by controllers. As independent directors and fiduciary duties are often insufficient, some jurisdictions give minority shareholders veto rights over related-party transactions. To assess these rights'...

Shareholder say-on-pay votes allow institutional investors to influence the incentives of managers and, consequently, corporate behaviour. Surprisingly, the preferences of investors on executive compensation have been largely overlooked in the ongoing debates on sustainable corporate behaviour....

We examine the labor market consequences for directors who adopt poison pills. Directors who become associated with pill adoption experience significant decreases in vote margins and increases in termination rates across all their directorships. They also experience a decrease in the likelihood...

This paper studies the interactions between corporate law and VC exits by acquisitions, an increasingly common source of VC-related litigation. We find that transactions by VC funds under liquidity pressure are characterized by (i) a substantially lower sale price; (ii) a greater probability of...

The desirability of a dual-class structure, which enables founders of public companies to retain a lock on control while holding a minority of the company's equity capital, has long been the subject of a heated debate. This debate has focused on whether dual-class stock is an efficient capital...

A battle is brewing for control of America's most dynamic companies. Entrepreneurs are increasingly seeking protection from interference or dismissal by public investors through the adoption of dual-class stock structures in initial public offerings. Institutional investors are pushing back,...

This paper examines the origins of investor protection under the common law by analysing the development of shareholder protection in Victorian Britain, the home of the common law. In this era, very little was codified, with corporate law simply suggesting a default template of rules....

This paper examines the origins of investor protection under the common law by analysing the development of shareholder protection in Victorian Britain, the home of the common law. In this era, very little was codified, with corporate law simply suggesting a default template of rules....