Anmerkungen:
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments January 4, 2023 erstellt
Beschreibung:
This paper examines whether and to what extent directors’ career concerns influence firms’ investor outreach efforts. Directors experiencing proxy fights face serious career concerns due to the prospect of losing their board positions. Using a staggered difference-in-differences design, we find that directors whose careers are threatened by a proxy fight in a given firm increase investor outreach efforts in interlocked firms where they also hold board positions. The increase in investor outreach efforts is more pronounced when the director is up for election or receives an unfavorable recommendation from a proxy advisor as well as when more shares of the interlocked firm are held by long-term institutional investors. Such outreach activities improve shareholder perception of directors and reduce the likelihood of future proxy contests. Overall, our results suggest that directors rely on investor outreach as an effective mechanism to alleviate career concerns