The Effects of Stewardship Code on the Exercise of Voting Rights by Institutional Investors at Shareholders’ Meetings

Abstract

Based on the sample firms listed on the Korea Stock Exchange, this study analyzes the characteristics of institutional investors who adopted the Korea stewardship code. The changes in their voting patterns at annual shareholders’ meetings and the characteristics of firms that led to such changes after the stewardship code was introduced in December 2016 are also analyzed. Empirical analyses reveal that the institutional investors who belong to a financial group, invest a larger amount of money in stocks, pay more dividends in cash, belong to foreign institutional investors, and showed a higher level of negative votes before code participation tend to participate more actively in the stewardship code. We also find that the institutional investors who have introduced the code tend to show a higher level of negative voting, especially when invested firms have more severe agency problems such that the invested companies pay less dividends in cash but hold relatively more cash, and have low shares of foreign investors as effective monitors of the firms. These results suggest that the introduction of the stewardship code tends to lead domestic institutional investors to more actively monitor the invested companies, which would eventually help improve the corporate governance of listed firms in Korea.