The Changing Face Of Share Ownership

This book examines the shareholder activism of institutional investors, and the effect of this activism on portfolio performance. By focusing on 118 institutional investors headquartered in the United States, the book is unique in addressing the shareholder activism of a large sample. Institutional shareholder activism is defined to include both traditional mechanisms of influence (i.e. filing shareholder proposals) and relationship investing. Institutional owners included private and public pension funds, mutual funds, bank trusts, insurance companies, endowments, and foundations. These institutional owners differ substantially, and these differences lead institutions to use their ownership power to pursue different philosophies and actions. Some institutions follow a passive governance policy, While others adopt an activist role. This book seeks to answer four questions: (1) Are institutional owners actively involved in the strategic affairs of companies in their portfolios? (2)Which forms of activism do institutional owners employ (either confrontational mechanisms, such as filing shareholder proposals, or relationship building mechanisms)? (3)Which forms of activism employed are most effective? and (4) Does the institutional type affect its pursuit of shareholder activism? In answering these questions the author suggests new important results that in many cases are contrary to what prior reports of the activities by a small number of institutional owners may intimate.

First Published in 2000. This book examines the shareholder activism of institutional investors and the effect of shareholder activism on portfolio performance. Institutional shareholder activism includes both traditional mechanisms of influence (e.g., filing shareholder proposals) and relationship investing (e.g., long-term interorganizational contacts between owners and a corporation’s top managers).

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This chapter documents the evolution of ownership and control of firms around the world over a hundred year period from the beginning of the 20th century to today. It records the substantial changes that have taken place in the nature of stock markets and contrasts these with the persistent patterns of ownership that are observed in many countries around the world. In particular, it documents the growth in dispersion in ownership that took place in many countries from the early part of the 20th century. It reports that this took place in the absence of formal systems of investor protection but in the presence of institutional developments that facilitated the building of trust between investors and firms. Contrary to the view that concentrations of ownership necessarily undermine the operation of equity markets by exploiting minority interests, the chapter argues that in many countries they played a central role not just in exercising control but also in promoting relations between investors and firms that were central to the development of their stock markets. In particular, concentrations of ownership in the hands of families may have been a source of public as well as private benefits. The chapter concludes by looking at recent changes and argues that these reinforce the long-run patterns of the relative decline of the UK and US stock markets, the continued decline of family firms in the UK, the growth of private equity and the emergence of new forms of concentrated shareholdings.

This examination of changes taking place in the world of football focuses on its growing commercialization. It covers such topics as fans becoming shareholders, with a say in the running of the clubs, and the setting-up of a government-sponsored scheme to support shareholder trusts.

WIPO's World Intellectual Property Report 2011 focuses on the Changing Face of Innovation. It describes key trends in the innovation landscape - including the increasingly open, international and collaborative character of the innovation process; the causes of the increased demand for IP rights; and the rising importance of technology markets.

Examines how and why corporate strategy, structure and culture is continuing to change markedly in Southeast Asia.

The year 2013 marked the 100th anniversary of the 1913 Land Act in South Africa which legalised the violent dispossession and alienation of the African majority from the land. It is common cause that the alienation of land for conservation purposes, introduced to Africa under colonial rule, has continued more or less uninterrupted until today. However, while nature conservation practices inevitably raise challenging questions relating to land and land use, there has thus far been little concentrated effort to bring together scholars working on the land question, particularly around issues of land tenure, with those whose work focuses on questions of nature construction and the social impacts of conservation in an African context. Compiled from research presented at a ground-breaking interdisciplinary conference held at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, in 2012, the chapters in this book made their first appearance in a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary African Studies (JCAS) in July 2013. The book brings critical interdisciplinary analyses of the complex interrelations between contemporary (neoliberal) conservation practices in post-colonial Africa, into conversation with the well-trodden territory of land use and contested land issues on the continent. Anchored by an intellectual curiosity about the extent to which past practices continue into the present and with what consequences, the book provides fresh insights into the complex relationship between land and conservation in contemporary Africa.