Prestigious funding for governance research project

Professor Dr Zacharias Sautner, Professor of Finance at Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, along with project partners from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Professor Rüdiger Fahlenbrach and PhD student Maxime Couvert) and the University of Zurich (Professor Dr Alexander Wagner) will receive funding from the Norwegian Finance Initiative for their research project "Changing Ownership Structure and its implications for Corporate Governance". In previous years, the prestigious fellowship was awarded to professors from Columbia University, Harvard University, London Business School, New York University and Stanford University.

The project aims to understand the development of preferences of major institutional investors concerning environmental, social and governance issues. The research team analyses proxy voting guidelines and responses to large-scale investor surveys in order to provide insight into three overarching questions: How do institutional investors structure or use voting at annual general meetings? What influence do institutional investors have on portfolio companies? And how will their stewardship activities affect the performance of their portfolio companies? The project thus contributes to our understanding of how ownership structures affect good corporate governance, corporate decision-making and long-term business success.

"The support from the Norwegian Finance Initiative is a great achievement for us. We look forward to gaining new insight into current and highly relevant governance issues, through this project", said Professor Sautner, Professor of Finance at Frankfurt School.