The factor market spillover effects of shareholder activism
In: The journal of financial research: the journal of the Southern Finance Association and the Southwestern Finance Association, Band 44, Heft 3, S. 671-689
ISSN: 1475-6803
AbstractFirms and CEOs are linked in the factor market because CEO talents are transferable across different firms. Shareholder activism increases the nontarget firm's outside option and reduces the nontarget CEO's outside option. This leads to higher profit and lower CEO compensation at the nontarget firm. Due to this positive spillover, the activist's intervention is inefficiently low. As CEO talents become more transferable, monitoring, and performance improve more and CEO compensation decreases more at the nontarget firm; shareholder activism becomes less efficient due to the increased linkage between CEOs. This paper also provides a number of novel empirical predictions.