IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecofin/v37y2016icp348-373.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Which institutional investors matter for firm survival and performance?

Author

Listed:
  • Erenburg, Grigori
  • Smith, Janet Kiholm
  • Smith, Richard

Abstract

Using data that spans three decades, we assess the diverse roles of institutional investors in impacting survival and performance of chronically underperforming firms and contrast the results for consistently overperforming firms. We find material differences in investor roles and investment returns between these samples. Differentiating among institutional types, controlling for prior performance and attrition bias provides insights unattainable by examining aggregated holdings. For underperformers, results are negative for activist pension funds and long-term institutions, positive for activist hedge funds and short-term institutions, and mixed for institutional blockholders.

Suggested Citation

  • Erenburg, Grigori & Smith, Janet Kiholm & Smith, Richard, 2016. "Which institutional investors matter for firm survival and performance?," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 348-373.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecofin:v:37:y:2016:i:c:p:348-373
    DOI: 10.1016/j.najef.2016.05.012
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1062940816300444
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.najef.2016.05.012?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Malcolm Baker & Jeffrey Wurgler, 2000. "The Equity Share in New Issues and Aggregate Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(5), pages 2219-2257, October.
    2. John Y. Campbell & Jens Hilscher & Jan Szilagyi, 2008. "In Search of Distress Risk," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(6), pages 2899-2939, December.
    3. Paul A. Gompers & Andrew Metrick, 2001. "Institutional Investors and Equity Prices," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(1), pages 229-259.
    4. Gordon, Lilli A & Pound, John, 1993. "Information, Ownership Structure, and Shareholder Voting: Evidence from Shareholder-Sponsored Corporate Governance Proposals," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(2), pages 697-718, June.
    5. Del Guercio, Diane, 1996. "The distorting effect of the prudent-man laws on institutional equity investments," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 31-62, January.
    6. K. J. Martijn Cremers & Vinay B. Nair, 2005. "Governance Mechanisms and Equity Prices," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(6), pages 2859-2894, December.
    7. Malcolm Baker & Jeffrey Wurgler, 2006. "Investor Sentiment and the Cross‐Section of Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(4), pages 1645-1680, August.
    8. Alex Edmans, 2009. "Blockholder Trading, Market Efficiency, and Managerial Myopia," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(6), pages 2481-2513, December.
    9. April Klein & Emanuel Zur, 2009. "Entrepreneurial Shareholder Activism: Hedge Funds and Other Private Investors," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(1), pages 187-229, February.
    10. JOSEPH A. McCAHERY & ZACHARIAS SAUTNER & LAURA T. STARKS, 2016. "Behind the Scenes: The Corporate Governance Preferences of Institutional Investors," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 71(6), pages 2905-2932, December.
    11. Mehran, Hamid, 1995. "Executive compensation structure, ownership, and firm performance," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 163-184, June.
    12. Edward I. Altman, 1968. "Financial Ratios, Discriminant Analysis And The Prediction Of Corporate Bankruptcy," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 23(4), pages 589-609, September.
    13. Anat R. Admati & Paul Pfleiderer, 2009. "The "Wall Street Walk" and Shareholder Activism: Exit as a Form of Voice," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(7), pages 2445-2485, July.
    14. Edward I. Altman, 1968. "The Prediction Of Corporate Bankruptcy: A Discriminant Analysis," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 23(1), pages 193-194, March.
    15. Alon Brav & Wei Jiang & Frank Partnoy & Randall Thomas, 2008. "Hedge Fund Activism, Corporate Governance, and Firm Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(4), pages 1729-1775, August.
    16. Brickley, James A. & Lease, Ronald C. & Smith, Clifford Jr., 1988. "Ownership structure and voting on antitakeover amendments," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(1-2), pages 267-291, January.
    17. Pound, John, 1988. "Proxy contests and the efficiency of shareholder oversight," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(1-2), pages 237-265, January.
    18. Roberta Romano, 2000. "Less Is More: Making Shareholder Activism A Valued Mechanism Of Corporate Governance," Yale School of Management Working Papers ysm140, Yale School of Management, revised 01 Nov 2001.
    19. Guercio, Diane Del & Hawkins, Jennifer, 1999. "The motivation and impact of pension fund activism," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(3), pages 293-340, June.
    20. repec:bla:jfinan:v:53:y:1998:i:1:p:99-129 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. John R. Nofsinger & Richard W. Sias, 1999. "Herding and Feedback Trading by Institutional and Individual Investors," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(6), pages 2263-2295, December.
    22. Burns, Natasha & Kedia, Simi & Lipson, Marc, 2010. "Institutional ownership and monitoring: Evidence from financial misreporting," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 443-455, September.
    23. Chen, Xia & Harford, Jarrad & Li, Kai, 2007. "Monitoring: Which institutions matter?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(2), pages 279-305, November.
    24. repec:bla:jfinan:v:53:y:1998:i:4:p:1335-1362 is not listed on IDEAS
    25. Appel, Ian R. & Gormley, Todd A. & Keim, Donald B., 2016. "Passive investors, not passive owners," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(1), pages 111-141.
    26. Clifford, Christopher P., 2008. "Value creation or destruction? Hedge funds as shareholder activists," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 323-336, September.
    27. Stuart L. Gillan & Laura T. Starks, 2007. "The Evolution of Shareholder Activism in the United States," Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Morgan Stanley, vol. 19(1), pages 55-73, January.
    28. Wahal, Sunil, 1996. "Pension Fund Activism and Firm Performance," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 31(1), pages 1-23, March.
    29. Jay C. Hartzell & Laura T. Starks, 2003. "Institutional Investors and Executive Compensation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(6), pages 2351-2374, December.
    30. Song, Wei-Ling & Szewczyk, Samuel H., 2003. "Does Coordinated Institutional Investor Activism Reverse the Fortunes of Underperforming Firms?," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 38(2), pages 317-336, June.
    31. Roberta Romano, 2001. "Less is More: Making Shareholder Activism a Valuable Mechanism of Corporate Governance," CeRP Working Papers 12, Center for Research on Pensions and Welfare Policies, Turin (Italy).
    32. Greenwood, Robin & Schor, Michael, 2009. "Investor activism and takeovers," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(3), pages 362-375, June.
    33. Wei Jiang & Kai Li & Wei Wang, 2012. "Hedge Funds and Chapter 11," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(2), pages 513-560, April.
    34. Smith, Michael P, 1996. "Shareholder Activism by Institutional Investors: Evidence for CalPERS," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(1), pages 227-252, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bonini, Stefano & Capizzi, Vincenzo & Valletta, Mario & Zocchi, Paola, 2018. "Angel network affiliation and business angels' investment practices," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 592-608.
    2. Elena Karnoukhova & Anastasia Stepanova & Maria Kokoreva, 2018. "The Influence Of The Ownership Structure On The Performance Of Innovative Companies In The Us," HSE Working papers WP BRP 70/FE/2018, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    3. Benamraoui, Abdelhafid & Jory, Surendranath Rakesh & Mazouz, Khelifa & Shah, Neeta & Gough, Orla, 2019. "The effect of block ownership on future firm value and performance," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Grigori Erenburg & Janet Kiholm Smith & Richard Smith, 2015. "Does Institutional Ownership Promote the Transformation of Underperforming Firms?," Quarterly Journal of Finance (QJF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 5(04), pages 1-40, December.
    2. Edmans, Alex & Holderness, Clifford, 2016. "Blockholders: A Survey of Theory and Evidence," CEPR Discussion Papers 11442, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Renneboog, L.D.R. & Szilagyi, P.G., 2009. "Shareholder Activism through the Proxy Process," Other publications TiSEM cc25d736-2965-4511-b100-1, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    4. Bajo, Emanuele & Barbi, Massimiliano & Bigelli, Marco & Hillier, David, 2013. "The role of institutional investors in public-to-private transactions," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(11), pages 4327-4336.
    5. Raluca Roman, 2015. "Shareholder activism in banking," Research Working Paper RWP 15-9, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
    6. Renneboog, Luc & Szilagyi, Peter G., 2011. "The role of shareholder proposals in corporate governance," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 167-188, February.
    7. Harford, Jarrad & Kecskés, Ambrus & Mansi, Sattar, 2018. "Do long-term investors improve corporate decision making?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 424-452.
    8. Gine, Mireia & Moussawi, Rabih & Sedunov, John, 2017. "Governance mechanisms and effective activism: Evidence from shareholder proposals on poison pills," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 185-202.
    9. Szilagyi, P.G., 2007. "Corporate governance and the agency costs of debt and outside equity," Other publications TiSEM 9520d40a-224f-43a8-9bf9-b, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    10. Dasgupta, Amil & Fos, Vyacheslav & Sautner, Zacharias, 2021. "Institutional investors and corporate governance," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 112114, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    11. Hadani, Michael & Goranova, Maria & Khan, Raihan, 2011. "Institutional investors, shareholder activism, and earnings management," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 64(12), pages 1352-1360.
    12. Thomas Smythe & Chris McNeil & Philip English, 2015. "When does CalPERS’ activism add value?," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 39(4), pages 641-660, October.
    13. Schmidt, Cornelius & Fahlenbrach, Rüdiger, 2017. "Do exogenous changes in passive institutional ownership affect corporate governance and firm value?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(2), pages 285-306.
    14. Helwege, Jean & Intintoli, Vincent J. & Zhang, Andrew, 2012. "Voting with their feet or activism? Institutional investors’ impact on CEO turnover," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 22-37.
    15. Simon Döring & Wolfgang Drobetz & Sadok El Ghoul & Omrane Guedhami & Henning Schröder, 2021. "Institutional investment horizons and firm valuation around the world," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 52(2), pages 212-244, March.
    16. Richard Chung & Scott Fung & Szu-Yin Hung, 2012. "Institutional Investors and Firm Efficiency of Real Estate Investment Trusts," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 45(1), pages 171-211, June.
    17. Yu‐Luen Ma & Yayuan Ren, 2021. "Insurer risk and performance before, during, and after the 2008 financial crisis: The role of monitoring institutional ownership," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 88(2), pages 351-380, June.
    18. Zhang, Bobo & Zhang, Zhou, 2022. "Shining light on corporate political spending: Evidence from shareholder engagements," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    19. Jiang, George J. & Liu, Chang, 2021. "Getting on board: The monitoring effect of institutional directors," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    20. Jing Huang & Steven R. Matsunaga & Z. Jay Wang, 2020. "The Role of Pension Business Benefits in Institutional Block Ownership and Corporate Governance," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(4), pages 1959-1989, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecofin:v:37:y:2016:i:c:p:348-373. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/620163 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.