All over the world, companies play an important role in the economy. Different types of stakeholders hold the reins in these companies. An important class are the shareholders that finance the activities of these companies. In return, stakeholders have a say on how these companies should be...

Law and Finance theory stresses the importance of shareholder rights for the reliability and development of capital markets. Many European Parliaments picked up this corporate governance issue. We expand the analysis of Lele and Siems (2007) and show that the number of shareholder rights grew...

Current shareholder engagement systems face large classical inefficiencies. First, due to the large chains of intermediaries in the current securities models, transaction costs are high and shareholder votes and other information are not always correctly transmitted between shareholders and...

This paper studies the voting turnout, the voting behavior of large and small shareholders and the resolutions voted at annual general meetings (AGMs) and extra-ordinary general meetings (EGMs) of Belgian listed companies in 2011. The average voting turnout was 49,9 per cent in 2011, down from...

Using a sample of voting turnouts of annual general meetings of European companies, we document that shareholder voting turnouts are significantly different according to the ownership structure of the company. Different types of shareholder classes show different voting engagements according to...

An appropriate division of power between the board of directors and shareholders of the company is quintessential for the success of the company. However, for a long period of time the monitoring powers of the shareholders were limited. Recently, both the European and the national member states'...

In many countries shareholders were offered more rights to protect their position against “inappropriate” behaviour of other corporate constituents. Whether these developments resulted in more market participation and deeper and more liquid markets, as argued in law and finance theory,...

Shareholder activism is at the heart of the corporate governance debate. This study investigates shareholder activism through the voting turnout as well as the voting behavior of large and small shareholders and the resolutions voted at annual general meetings (AGMs) of Belgian listed...

This paper provides evidence that remote voting became the current technique for voting. Based on data for French companies, I found that gradually more and more shareholders, and not only institutional shareholders, vote in absentia. While a controlling shareholder continues to participate and...