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Dissenting Directors

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A Correction to this article was published on 24 January 2018

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Abstract

Expressions of dissent by corporate directors might be a valuable attribute of good corporate governance indicating the existence of an active board, but dissent is not necessarily a sign of independence, and can be disruptive and ill-motivated. Notwithstanding the potential importance of directors’ dissent, the subject has been largely neglected in the academic literature, also due to the scarcity of empirical or anecdotal evidence. We examine empirically dissent of directors—expressed either by voting against a resolution of the board, or by resigning from the board—using handpicked data from the Italian market. Differently from the few other works on this issue, we also consider dissent expressed by non-independent directors. After an overview of the existing literature on directors’ dissent, we discuss the legal framework of dissent under Italian law. We then present our dataset and discuss some methodological issues. In our empirical analysis, we address four questions: (a) What are the topics that directors more often dissent on? (b) What are the characteristics of dissenting directors in terms of age, gender, education, compensation, and who appointed them, as well as in terms of the organization of the board (e.g., if the positions of President and CEO are separated)? (c) In what types of corporations is dissent more common, in particular with respect to economic performance? (d) What are the consequences of dissent in terms of cumulative abnormal returns and volatility of the shares? Based on the results of the analysis, we offer some conclusions and raise some policy questions.

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Fig. 1

Source Assonime (2015)

Fig. 2

Source Elaborations on Assonime (2015)

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Source Assonime (2015)

Fig. 4

Source Elaborations from Consob, Assogestioni and Newspapers (2015)

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Source EU Commission (2015)

Fig. 6

Source Assonime (2015)

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Change history

  • 24 January 2018

    Gianfranco Siciliano’s affiliation was incorrect, since Mr. Siciliano is affiliated to the Department of Accounting at the Bocconi University and not to the Bocconi University School of Law.

Notes

  1. Cohn et al. (2016); Tochman Campbell et al. (2012); Stratmann and Verret (2012); Kahan and Rock (2011), p 1347; Mcdonnell (2011); Grundfest (2010); Genkin and Storero (2010).

  2. Erede and Ghezzi (2016); Stella Richter Jr. (2017), Stella Richter Jr. (2015), pp 47 et seq.; Alvaro et al. (2012); Malberti and Sironi (2008); Stella Richter Jr. (2007c), pp 36–48; Guizzi (2007); Ventoruzzo (2007); Zoppini (2008).

  3. Hopt (2016); McGaughey (2015); Biasi (2013); Höpner (2001); Roth (2010); Dinh (1999); Roe (1998a, b); Gerum and Wagner (1998); Nutzinger and Backhaus (1989).

  4. See Jiang et al. (2016); Ma and Khanna (2013).

  5. See above n. 4.

  6. See Bellavite Pellegrini (2013); Aganin and Volpin (2003).

  7. Clemente (2009); Guizzi (2007); Perassi (2007); Carbonetti (2007); Olivieri (2006); Tucci (2006), p 77 et seq.

  8. The Italian Code of Corporate Governance openly states that: ‘[n]ella valutazione della composizione del consiglio, occorre verificare che siano adeguatamente rappresentate, in relazione all’attività svolta dall’emittente, le diverse componenti (esecutiva, non esecutiva, indipendente) e le competenze professionali e manageriali, anche di carattere internazionale, tenendo altresì conto dei benefici che possono derivare dalla presenza in consiglio di diversi generi, fasce d’età e anzianità di carica’ (Art. 1, Comment).

  9. See, in a national and international perspective, Desana et al. (2015a), p 2245; Desana et al. (2015b), p 2515; Morera (2014); Monaco (2013); Calvosa and Rossi (2013); Garilli (2012); The quota-instrument: different approaches across Europe, Working Paper European Commission’s Network to Promote Women in Decision-making in Politics and the Economy (2011), available at http://ec.europa.eu/justice/gender-equality/files/quota-working_paper_en.pdf; Women on Boards (2011), available at https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/31480/11-745-women-on-boards.pdf.

  10. ‘In addition, China’s independent director institution is at its early stage. Both boards and independent directors have gradually learned how to play the board ‘games’. A fascinating research avenue is to examine independent directors’ voting patterns in a wide range of institutional settings, in particular, in advanced institutions where disclosure of dissent is not mandatory’, Ma and Khanna (2013), p 31.

  11. Ma and Khanna (2013), p 18.

  12. Jiang et al. (2016).

  13. Marshall (2010).

  14. Consob, 2015 Report on Corporate Governance of Italian Listed Companies, p 14, Table 1.3.

  15. See Ventoruzzo (2015); Marchetti (2015), p 448; Spolidoro (2015), p 134; Busani and Sagliocca (2014), p 1048.

  16. Holderness (2009).

  17. See Maugeri (2015); Irace (2001).

  18. Consob, 2015 Report on Corporate Governance of Italian Listed Companies, pp 15–17, Tables 1.6–1.11.

  19. See Assonime, Circolare n. 31/2015, Le novità del Codice di autodisciplina 2015 per la governance delle società quotate, Riv. soc. (2016), p 445; Pistocchi (2016) p 171; Alvaro et al. (2013); Marchetti (2012), p 38; Abriani (2012); Di Noia and Pucci (2012), p 115; Stella Richter Jr. (2007b), p 149; Zanardo (2004), p 400; De Mari (2000).

  20. Nerantzidis (2015); Luo and Salterio (2014); Carr (2012).

  21. For an overview of these requirements, see Ferrarini et al. (2013); Ventoruzzo (2007); Rossi (2011), p 775; Enriques (2009), p 10; Bonelli (2013).

  22. Eckbo et al. (2016); Provasi and Riva (2015); Choudhury (2015); Desana et al. (2015a, b); Kakabadse (2015); Sonnabend (2015); Chapple and Humphrey (2014); Alvarado et al. (2011); Adams and Funk (2009); Francoeur et al. (2008); Gul et al. (2011); Watson (2014); Ali and Kulik (2014); Joecks et al. (2013); Del Carmen Triana et al. (2013); Rubino De Ritis (2012); Busani and Mannella (2011); Alvarado et al. (2011); Francoeur et al. (2008), p 83; Brammer et al. (2007); Ingley and van der Walt (2003).

  23. Jassaud (2014); Dickson (2015).

  24. For a brief description of these models, see Ghezzi and Malberti (2008); Bellavite Pellegrini et al. (2010); Bellavite Pellegrini (2013). The one-tier model is currently increasing its own relevance in the academic debate, also in the light of the fact that, recently, one of the most widespread banks of the country opted for embracing it: a decision which did not go unnoticed. See Marchetti (2016); Bianchi (2016); Lener (2016), p 35; Mosco and Lopreiato (2016); Guaccero and Di Marcello (2016); Desana (2016); Sarale (2016).

  25. Consob, 2015 Report on Corporate Governance of Italian Listed Companies, p 24, Table 2.1.

  26. An interesting question has emerged: if directors members of an executive committee should be considered non-executive, because ‘executive’ directors must have specific individual executive responsibilities; of whether they are non-executive, with the somehow paradoxical consequence that in a corporation having an executive committee but no executives on the board all directors are non-executive. We believe the first interpretation to be preferable, but also the opposite opinion has been expressed. See Federici (2013).

  27. See Stella Richter Jr. (2014), p 10; Calvosa (2015); Ferro-Luzzi (2008); Regoli (2006); Denozza (2005) and, in a comparative perspective, Presti (2003) and Pericu (2003).

  28. Assonime (2015), in which the problematic issues related to the appointment of independent directors are considered: ‘[p]er mantenere l’analisi entro limiti di complessità ragionevoli si è scelto di censire i casi in cui l’amministratore era in carica 9 anni fa. Ciò comporta la rinuncia a verificare la continuità della carica; sono possibili, quindi, sporadici errori di classificazione. Sono stati considerati esplicitamente anche i (pochi) casi in cui la persona è passata dall’incarico di sindaco a quello di amministratore (e viceversa, quando si è replicata l’analisi sui sindaci)’ (p 55, fn. 55). Similarly, looking at the UK Code of Corporate Governance, ‘[i]n the UK any performance based pay for independent directors renders them presumptively non-independent, as does nine years continuous service’, Kershaw (2015). Cf. Pass (2006); Hannigan (2012), p 118.

  29. Inter alia, Stella Richter Jr. (2007a), pp 260 et seq. (who also focused on the main committee in the Italian scenario in a more recent piece: Stella Richter Jr. (2012); Belcredi (2005), pp 853–878, in particular, at para. 3. See also Chen and Wu (2016); Jiraporn et al. (2008); Carter et al. (2008).

  30. Assonime (2015), at p 43.

  31. For a wider discussion of the issues raised by the rule under analysis, see Stella Richter Jr. (2016), pp 4190 et seq.

  32. From an historical perspective, it is interesting to note that this system was firstly experimented with respect to state-owned corporations that were privatized in the 1990s, in order to inject an element of ‘corporate democracy’ in their governance. Later, in 1998, with the enactment of the already mentioned TUF, list voting was adopted generally for the appointment of the board of statutory auditors, based on the idea that a controlling body should also include representatives of minority shareholders. In 2005, also as a consequence of financial scandals, the legislature extended the system also to the board of directors.

  33. See also Assonime (2015), p 59.

  34. A clarification can be helpful. A corporation can be considered ‘controlled’ by a single shareholder owning 40% of the shares, who generally invests in a long-term perspective and is actively involved in the managing of the corporation. The group of institutional investors supporting some candidates, on the other hand, is by definition temporary and unstable: it might be that, all together, they attract 51% of the votes, but these votes are controlled by a single shareholder, or by a stable coalition aiming at controlling the corporation.

  35. Extensive literature on whether effect on performances or the opposite: see above n. 22 and, in particular, Eckbo et al. (2016).

  36. It shall also be observed that it might also be necessary to publicly disclose information concerning a dissenting vote if it could be considered a price-sensitive information pursuant to the regulation of market abuses (insider trading and market manipulation), as amended by European law with the New Market Abuse Regulation. See, Commission Implementing Directive (EU) 2015/2392 of 17 December 2015 on Regulation (EU) No. 596/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards reporting to competent authorities of actual or potential infringements of that Regulation [2015] OJ L 332, available at http://data.europa.eu/eli/dir_impl/2015/2392/oj and, in a comparative perspective, Ventoruzzo (2016).

  37. For a discussion of these rules see Ventoruzzo (2005), pp 299 et seq.

  38. Vassalli (2011), p 157; De Nicola (2005); Scarpa (2011); Trib. Milano Sez. VIII, 12 May 2010, Giur. It. (2011), p 119 (‘se dissenziente per motivi non pretestuosi, avrebbe potuto fare annotare il proprio dissenso nelle forme prescritte dalla legge, per andare esente da qualsivoglia responsabilità’); Trib. Napoli, 26 April 2000, available at http://studiolegale.leggiditalia.it/ (‘La responsabilità de qua ha natura contrattuale (cfr. in tal senso Cass. 9.7.87, n. 5989) e non ha carattere oggettivo, sicché non si estende all’amministratore che sia immune da colpa e che abbia fatto annotare senza ritardo il suo dissenso nel libro delle adunanze e delle deliberazioni del consiglio di amministrazione, dandone notizia per iscritto al presidente del collegio sindacale’); Trib. Perugia Sez. III, 25 February 2015, available at http://studiolegale.leggiditalia.it/ (‘in mancanza della esplicita dissociazione di taluno degli amministratori dall’operato dell’organo collegiale (escluso quanto sopra già detto per la posizione di B.) da farsi constare nelle forme previste dall’art. 2392, co. 3, c.c., tutti gli amministratori debbano ritenersi responsabili, ratione temporis, in via solidale fra loro, per i danni eventualmente arrecati con il loro comportamento alla società (cfr. art. 2392, co. 1 e 2, c.c.) e ai creditori sociali (cfr. art. 2394 c.c.)’).

    As to one-tier and two-tier models, see Riolfo (2010), in particular, Chapter 1; Riolfo (2013), in particular, Chapter 3.

  39. The limited size of our dataset is not a unique feature of the Italian stock market. For example, in the much larger US stock market, Fields and Gupta (2009) identify 133 resigning outside directors. Similarly, Agrawal and Chen (2008), use 8-ks to construct a sample of 168 outside directors’ resignations in the period 1995–2006.

  40. Please note that, although in the remainder of the text we use the words ‘sample’ or ‘subsample’, our data reflect the universe of observations.

  41. This amount compares to an average of 52,000 Euro for the entire stock market in Italy.

  42. This amount compares to an average of 52.6% for the same variable computed for all Italian listed companies in Datastream as per 31 December 2015.

  43. Even if a significant number of scholars discuss the likelihood of separation between the two roles due to agency conflicts between the CEO and shareholders (ex multis, Core et al. 1999; Goyal and Park 2002), it is worth recalling that other scholars argue that a combination of the titles above is efficient from a decision-making perspective (Brickley et al. 1997). An attempt to reconcile the two different views on the topic (or, at least, to recognize that ‘forcing separation by fiat is likely not an ideal policy’) tries to exercise caution in the rush to separate the two roles, see Jayaraman et al. (2015).

  44. Jensen (1993).

  45. Dewally and Peck (2010).

  46. For the remaining four cases, public available disclosures do not provide information about the reasons of the dissent.

  47. See Klein (1998); Bhagat and Black (1999, 2002); Wang (2014); Gay and Denning (2014); Baum (2017).

  48. Larcker and Tayan (2016).

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Borsa Italiana s.p.a., and specifically Livia Gasperi and Alessandro Delle Donne, for making available important public data in a manageable form; Massimo Menchini for reading an earlier draft and offering precious suggestions; and Duccio Regoli for sharing some ideas on independent directors with the Authors. We are particularly grateful to Maria Lucia Passador for excellent research assistance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bocconi University School of Law, Milan, Italy

    Piergaetano Marchetti, Gianfranco Siciliano & Marco Ventoruzzo

  2. Pennsylvania State University Law School, University Park, PA, USA

    Marco Ventoruzzo

  3. Max Planck Institute, Luxembourg, Luxembourg

    Marco Ventoruzzo

  4. Research Associate, ECGI, Brussels, Belgium

    Marco Ventoruzzo

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  1. Piergaetano Marchetti
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  2. Gianfranco Siciliano
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  3. Marco Ventoruzzo
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Correspondence to Marco Ventoruzzo.

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A correction to this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1007/s40804-018-0101-y.

Appendix

Appendix

Variable definitions and source in parenthesis

MINORITY

=

Indicator equal to one if the independent director is a minority director (meeting minutes or financial reports)

AGE

=

Age of the independent director at the time of the event

FEMALE

=

Indicator equal to one if the independent director is a woman

REMUNERATION

=

Remuneration of independent directors at the time of the event (corporate governance report and financial reports)

BOARD MEMBERS

=

Number of board members (executive and non-executive) at the time of the event (financial reports)

N_APPOINTMENTS

=

Total number of independent director’s appointments at other corporations’ boards (Bureau van Dijk)

ALMA MATER

=

Indicator equal to one if independent director holds a diploma (internet, CV attached to the voting list)

POSTGRAD

=

Indicator equal to one if independent director has post-graduate degree (e.g., Master, Ph.D.) (internet, CV attached to the voting list)

CEO_PRESIDENT

=

Indicator equal to one if the Chief Executive Director is also the president of the board at the time of the event (financial report)

CLOSE

=

Percentage of shares held by large investors (Datastream) measured in the year of the event

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Marchetti, P., Siciliano, G. & Ventoruzzo, M. Dissenting Directors. Eur Bus Org Law Rev 18, 659–700 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40804-017-0093-z

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