Posted by Jennifer G. Hill, University of Sydney, on Monday, March 6, 2017
Editor's Note: Jennifer G. Hill is Professor of Corporate Law at Sydney Law School and a Director of the Ross Parsons Centre of Commercial, Corporate and Taxation Law. This post is based on her recent paper. Related research from the Program on Corporate Governance includes The Myth that Insulating Boards Serves Long-Term Value by Lucian Bebchuk (discussed on the Forum here); and Private Ordering and the Proxy Access Debate by Lucian Bebchuk and Scott Hirst (discussed on the Forum here).
Shareholder power and activism are topics of enormous current interest in the United States and around the world. The prospect of greater shareholder involvement in corporate governance has been welcomed and encouraged in some jurisdictions, such as the United Kingdom, yet has been met with widespread apprehension in the United States. There is a paradox here. Although the United States is generally regarded as the birthplace of shareholder activism, in fact, US shareholders have traditionally possessed far fewer corporate governance rights than shareholders in other common law jurisdictions, including the United Kingdom and Australia.
