Abstract
We examine the impact of the proxy voting guidelines of the Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) on managers’ opportunistic reporting behaviors. In January 2015, the ISS introduced a new advisory guideline based on firms’ return on equity (ROE), and started to recommend that shareholders should vote against the proposed director election for firms whose ROE is lower than 5%. Focusing on this benchmark, we find that managers are more likely to achieve this threshold since the publication of the guideline and, in particular, they do so by accrual management and increased dividends. Moreover, firms with higher institutional ownership are more likely to beat the threshold. This paper thus contributes to the literature by providing new evidence that earnings management can be motivated by a unique soft law and detects managers’ discretion in the context of ROE.
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
