Ties That Bind: How Business Connections Affect Mutual Fund Activism
利用2003至2011年数据，研究发现共同基金与投资组合公司的商业联系显著影响其代理投票倾向，尤其在股东提案中，管理层利用现有商业关系影响投票结果。
ABSTRACT We investigate whether business ties with portfolio firms influence mutual funds' proxy voting using a comprehensive data set spanning 2003 to 2011. In contrast to prior literature, we find that business ties significantly influence promanagement voting at the level of individual pairs of fund families and firms after controlling for Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) recommendations and holdings. The association is significant only for shareholder‐sponsored proposals and stronger for those that pass or fail by relatively narrow margins. Our findings are consistent with a demand‐driven model of biased voting in which company managers use existing business ties with funds to influence how they vote.