The Capital Market Consequences of Tenure-Based Voting Rights: Evidence from the Florange Act
研究了法国《弗洛朗热法案》强制推行持股两年自动获得双倍投票权对公司的资本市场影响，发现采用该规则的公司长期外资机构持股下降、股票回报率更低、环境与社会绩效恶化，质疑了监管推动的持股期限投票权作为公司治理机制的价值。
We examine the consequences of a regulatory intervention aimed at generalizing tenure voting in French public companies. The 2014 Florange Act departs from the ‘one share one vote’ principle by automatically granting double-voting rights (DVR) to shares held for at least two years. However, firms can opt out through an annual meeting vote. We document three main findings. First, firms that adopt DVR by default experience a decrease in long-term foreign institutional ownership offset by an increase in insider/family ownership. Second, those firms significantly underperform in terms of stock returns after Florange relative to those that reject DVR. Third, their environmental and social performance deteriorates. Collectively, our evidence casts doubt on the merit of regulation-induced tenure voting as a desirable corporate governance mechanism. This paper was accepted by Brian Bushee, accounting. Funding: This work was supported by Research Grants Council of Hong Kong [16513216]. We also acknowledge the General Research Fund of the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong [Project No. 16505017] for financial support. Supplemental Material: The e-companion and data are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4320 .