Are Antitakeover Amendments Good for Shareholders? Evidence from the Adoption of Antitakeover Provisions in the Post-SOX Era

Abstract

By combining a regression discontinuity (RD) design with a novel instrumental variable, I estimate the value of antitakeover provisions (ATPs) adopted between 2006 and 2010. In contrast to evidence from earlier periods, I estimate that, during this recent period, ATP adoption increased shareholder value by approximately 3%. An important challenge to estimating the value of ATPs is that standard RD estimates can be biased if interested parties manipulate vote outcomes. To address this, I exploit exogenous variation in the likelihood of passage that results from “over-votes”, the extra illegitimate votes arising from securities lending practices. Because ATP passage requires affirmative votes from a majority of outstanding shares, rather than of shares voted, over-votes increase the likelihood of passage.