Abstract
This study examines whether normative pressures from stock market regulators to improve the governance quality of Brazilian listed firms influence the participation and activism of institutional investors. More specifically, we investigate the association between institutional investor’s ownership and firm’s voluntary adhesion to the São Paulo Stock Exchange (B3) differentiated levels of corporate governance quality. Empirical testing is performed on a ten-year (2002–2011) panel data set from a sample of 439 firms listed on the B3. Our findings suggest that firms in differentiated corporate governance levels, that is, with better level of transparency and commitment to monitoring, are more attractive to institutional investors. We interpret this result as evidence supporting the shareholder activism movement, attributed by several scholars to institutional shareholders. Our study contributes to the governance literature on the firm’s response to normative pressures and the ability of internal governance mechanisms to signal lower agency cost to capital market. Our evidence also contributes to the ongoing discussion about the role and influence of institutional investors in the functioning of capital markets, and more specific in emerging market like Brazil.
© 2015, School of Accounting and Management, National Autonomous University of Mexico. All rights reserved. Publication of the article implies full assignment of property rights (copyright) in Journal of Accounting and Management. The publication mreserves the right to total or partial reproduction of the work in other print, electronic or any other alternative means, but always recognizing its responsibility.
Unless otherwise stated, all contents of the electronic edition of the journal are distributed under a license and distribution "Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International" (CC-by). You can see from here the version of the license information. This circumstance must be expressly stated in this way when necessary.