Professor Bebchuk speaks at SEC hearing in favor of shareholder access to the ballot

The SEC held a day of hearings as the final stage of its deliberations whether to adopt the rule proposal to permit shareholders to place candidates on the company ballot in certain situations. Professor Lucian Bebchuk participated in the day's opening panel which discussed whether the current proxy process suffers from problems that need to be addressed. Other participants in the panel included Steve Odland, chair of the Business Roundtable's corporate governance committee, Martin Lipton, founding partner of Wachtell, Lipton, and Eric Roiter, General Counsel of Fidelity. In his remarks, Professor Bebchuk discussed the implications of the empirical work that he has done for the discussed question. In a recent article, Professor Bebchuk documented that the incidence of proxy contests is extremely low. And current empirical work (joint with Alma Cohen) shows that board insulation is negatively correlated with firm value. A transcript of the Professor Bebchuk's comments and the hearings is available on the SEC web site at HEARING.

Last updated:March 2004
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