When a proxy contest is looming, the rate at which CEOs exercise options in order to sell (hold) the resulting shares slows down by 80% (accelerates by 60%), consistent with their desire to maintain or strengthen voting rights when facing challenges. Such deviations are closely aligned with...

This paper studies the long-term effect of hedge fund activism on the productivity of target firms using plant-level information from the U.S. Census Bureau. A typical target firm improves its production efficiency in the three years after an activist intervention, and the improvements are most...

Using a unique dataset of board proposal voting by individual independent directors of public companies in China from 2004 to 2009, we analyze the effects of career concerns and current reputation stock on independent directors' propensity to confront management. Younger directors and directors...

This paper studies how hedge fund activism reshapes corporate innovation. Firms targeted by hedge fund activists experience an improvement in innovation efficiency during the five-year period following the intervention. Despite a tightening in R&D expenditures, target firms experience increases...

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of a new and increasingly important phenomenon: the simultaneous holding of both equity and debt claims of the same company by noncommercial-banking institutions ("dual holders"). The presence of dual holders offers a unique opportunity to assess the...

This paper formally analyzes the biases related to self-reporting in hedge fund databases by matching the quarterly equity holdings of a complete list of 13F-filing hedge fund companies to the union of five major commercial databases of self-reporting hedge funds between 1980 and 2008. We find...

This paper studies the presence of hedge funds in the Chapter 11 process and their effects on bankruptcy outcomes. Hedge funds strategically choose positions in the capital structure where their actions could have a bigger impact on value. Their presence, especially as unsecured creditors, helps...