There is now extensive empirical evidence showing that fund managers have relative performance objectives and adapt their investment strategy in the last part of the calendar year to their performance in the early part of the year. However, emphasis was put on returns in excess of some exogenous...

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 pro-management voting at the level of individual pairs of fund...

Mutual funds are significant blockholders in many corporations. Concerns that funds vote in a pro management manner to garner lucrative pensions contracts led the SEC to mandate the disclosure of proxy votes. We present a model of mutual fund voting in the presence of potential business ties. We...