Shareholder activism by hedge funds has over the past few years become a major corporate governance phenomenon. This paper puts the trend into context. The paper begins by distinguishing the “offensive” form of activism hedge funds engage in from “defensive” interventions...

Against all odds, hedge fund activism occurs also in companies with concentrated ownership structure where the ultimate threat of a take-over has little chance to raise any concern among controlling shareholders.After summarizing the U.S. literature on the subject, this Article provides an...

This paper looks at shareholder activism from the perspective of the revision of the EU Shareholder Rights Directive, which was approved by the European Parliament on 14 March 2017. The main findings are as follows.First, the effective engagement of institutional investors in corporate...

We investigate the Dead Hand Proxy Put, a contractual innovation in corporate debt agreements that may impact hedge fund activism. We find the provision principally in loans, not bonds, and provide evidence linking adoption of the provision to hedge fund activism. Further, controlling for...

Hedge fund activism is associated with improvements in the governance and performance of targeted firms. In this paper, we show that these positive effects of activism reach beyond the targets, as non-targeted peers make similar improvements under the threat of activism. Peers with higher threat...

This paper studies the effect of stock liquidity on blockholder governance. Conditional upon acquiring a stake, liquidity reduces the likelihood that a blockholder governs through voice (intervention) – as shown by the greater propensity to file Schedule 13Gs (passive investment) than 13Ds...

We examine the product market spillover effects of hedge fund activism (HFA) on the industry rivals of target firms. HFA has negative real and stockholder wealth effects on the average rival firm. The effects on rivals' product market performance is commensurate with post-activism improvements...

Extant literature focuses on the governance effect of hedge fund activism on shareholders but overlooks other stakeholders. We fill this literature gap by investigating one important stakeholder who also plays a governance role: the auditor. We find that the governance effect of hedge fund...

This paper shows that hedge fund activism is associated with a decrease in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and offer premiums and an increase in stock and operating performance. Activist hedge funds improve target firms' M&A performance by reducing poor M&A, diversifying M&A, and the M&A of firms...

Using a comprehensive hedge fund activism dataset, we find that activist hedge funds are about 52% more likely to target firms with female CEOs compared to firms with male CEOs. We find that firm fundamentals, the existence of a “glass cliff,” gender discrimination bias, and hedge fund...