From apathy to activism: Shareholder dissent on director's pay proposals and board effectiveness

Chan Ke, Xuezhi Zhang and Zixun Zhou

The British Accounting Review, 2024, vol. 56, issue 6

Abstract: Using a hand-collected dataset of shareholder voting on 10,805 director compensation proposals at general shareholder meetings of Chinese listed firms from 2010 to 2019, we provide novel empirical evidence on board reactions to shareholder dissent. We find that boards of directors facing shareholder dissent significantly improve their monitoring and advising effectiveness. Specifically, they reduce the likelihood of financial restatements, improve CEO performance-turnover sensitivity, and improve corporate investment efficiency. Our findings are robust to propensity score matching, instrumental variable estimation and the exogenous shock of mandatory online voting. Moreover, independent directors facing dissent are more likely to vote against board proposals and to reduce their absences from board meetings. The mechanism analysis shows that shareholder dissent operates through the reputation concern and market signal channels. The effect of dissent is more prominent for non-SOEs, for firms with more high-profile directors, and for firms with less powerful CEOs. Besides, the improved board effectiveness induced by shareholder dissent leads to better firm performance. Overall, our findings highlight the role of shareholder voting in emerging markets with concentrated ownership and weak investor protection.

Keywords: Shareholder voting; Shareholder activism; Board of directors effectiveness; Reputation concern; Market signal (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G34 G38 K22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:bracre:v:56:y:2024:i:6:s0890838924000994

DOI: 10.1016/j.bar.2024.101360

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