Regulation, shareholder rights and corporate governance: an empirical note

We investigate the impact of regulation on shareholder rights and corporate governance. We gauge the strength of shareholder rights by measuring the number of restrictive governance provisions that suppress shareholder rights - the more restrictive the governance, the weaker the shareholder rights. We find that financial firms have less restrictive corporate governance, suggesting that financial regulations promote shareholder rights. On the other hand, regulation does not seem to impact shareholder rights in the utility industry.