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Bibliographie

Cette bibliographie annotée sur l’investissement socialement responsable des caisses de retraite se veut la plus complète à ce sujet. Nous prévoyons très bientôt l'ajout à ce site d'une bibliographie de sources académiques francophones internationales.

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naviguer une bibliographie d’un projet : 1: Shareholder and Corporate Engagement 2: Social Accounting for Pension Fund Investments 3: Assessing the Impact of Economically Targeted Investments by Pension Funds 4: Impact of Human Capital Based Investment Criteria on Total Shareholder Returns 4a: Global Standards and Pension Funds 5: Legal Barriers to Socially Responsible Investment 6: Role Conflict by Union Trustees of Pension Funds 7: Developing Education for Labour Trustees of Pension Funds 8: Evaluation of Trustee Education 9: Online Learning Community for Labour Trustees 10: A Gender Analysis of Pensions and Social Investment

Section 153(2) of the CBCA, under Part XIII: Proxies, is titled "Restriction on voting". It states than an intermediary may not vote shares that they do not own and that are registered in their name unless the intermediary receives written voting instructions from the beneficial owner.

Wall Street is gaining attention with a battle between some of the top names in financial economics. The capital-asset pricing model (CAPM), which is used to assess risk and return, has come under fire. Two economists have released a paper claiming that the key analytical tool used by the model does not really explain why returns on shares differ.

Donovan v. Walton considered the duties of prudence and loyalty in the context of an ETI-type investment. In that case, the US Department of Labor alleged that the trustees of the Operating Engineers Local 675 Pension Trust Fund had breached their fiduciary duties by constructing and financing an administration building on property owned by the Fund and leasing space to its Union. Trustees representing labour and management jointly administered the Fund. The factual findings detailed by the court were that the Fund decided to purchase land and construct an administration building “based on deliberative research and analysis by both the trustees and independent consultants…” Besides, the court found that the decision to purchase the real estate was not a breach of the trustees’ fiduciary duties. In related proceedings based on the same facts, the US Department of Labor also alleged that the Fund’s trustees had breached their fiduciary duties by offering mortgages at below market rates of interest to plan members through a mortgage loan program.

This is a case of material non-disclosure in which the appellant alleges breach of fiduciary duty and breach of contract against the respondent in the performance of a contract for investment advice and other tax-related financial services. The respondent, Mr. Simms, was a Chartered Accountant and partner in the respondent firm Simms & Waldman. Mr. Simms had developed a special expertise in relation to multi-unit residential buildings (MURBs). In 1980 the appellant Mr. Hodgkinson retained Mr. Simms' services in the areas of tax planning and preparation, and in finding stable, tax-sheltering investments. Mr. Hodgkinson was a "neophyte" in the field of tax planning and tax-related investments. He approached Mr. Simms as an independent professional who would give him the impartial service and advice he was looking for. Mr. Hodgkinson decided to put himself in Mr. Simms' hands with respect to his tax planning and tax sheltering needs. In the course of their relationship, Mr. Simms recommended four MURB projects to Mr. Hodgkinson as meeting his investment criteria. Mr. Hodgkinson duly invested in these projects. What Mr. Hodgkinson did not know, however, was that at the time Mr. Simms was making these recommendations, he was in a financial relationship with the developers of the projects. The more MURBs Mr. Simms sold to Simms & Waldman clients, the larger the fees he reaped from the developers. While Mr. Simms attempted to deny the non-disclosure by arguing at discovery that his relationship with the developers was in fact disclosed to Mr. Hodgkinson, and then stating at trial that his business relationship with the developers did not commence until after Mr. Hodgkinson had invested in the projects, this line of defense was rejected by the trial judge and was not pursued on appeal. Rather, this appeal concerns the proper characterization of the relationship between the parties and determining the nature and extent of the civil liability, if any, flowing from the non-disclosure. The trial judge, Prowse J., found there was an implied retainer between the parties, one of the terms of which was a contractual duty of material disclosure. She went on to find the respondent in breach of this term. In addition, the trial judge held that the relationship between the parties was such that the respondent owed the appellant a fiduciary duty.

In this book, Aaker tells how to deal with the fragmentation of markets by building brand identity, creating brand personality, and managing a brand system. Aaker uses real brand-building cases from Saturn, GE, Kodak, and others to demonstrate how the best brand managers create brand equity, with an emphasis on positioning a brand personality to match that of the consumer being targeted. In so doing, Aaker presents a thorough, but easy to read exploration of the many branding complexities, making readers realize how crucial a brand identity is in today’s economy. Well written and researched, Aaker delves into case studies, highlighting that the role of the organizational associations, of the culture values and the emotional input is very well integrated to understand the multidimensional meaning of a brand. This book will help brand, marketing and/or commercialization managers to best leverage their corporate, range and product brands. Additionally, the insights presented to understand brand and company valuations are very well explained.

In this book chapter, Adam focuses his attention on organizational boundaries and examines in considerable detail that the special roles organization develop for carrying out the “acquisition” and “disposal” functions which must take place at system boundaries. Central to the chapter is a new structural model of organizational boundary systems, which specified both the unique properties of boundary roles and the major sources of influence on the behavior of people who occupy such roles. Particular emphasis is given to the “bargaining” activities required of boundary role occupants. Research evidence relevant to each of the major sources of influence on boundary role behavior is reviewed, including several findings which have emerged from recent research prompted by the Adams model. Throughout the chapter, the interdependencies among the components of the model are emphasized, and compelling arguments are advanced for the importance of considering behavior at organizational boundaries in “systems” terms.

Investor Communications Services is a division of Automatic Data Processing, a North American-based global payroll processing company. ICS, as part of ADP's Brokerage Service Group, handles a wide variety of shareholder communications. The "2005 Proxy Season Statistics" is a spreadsheet which details the jobs, shares and share-voting that occurred, in both 2005 and 2004, for all companies that have dealt with ICS (proxies) during that time.

This report, published in September of 2004 by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organisations' Office of Investment, evaluates how the top-ten mutual fund companies in the United States voted on behalf of their shareholders ("proxy votes") with regard to the specific issue of executive pay proposals, looking specifically at twelve S&P 500 companies which the AFL-CIO has deemed to have "clearly excessive CEO pay and poor performance". This report was written as a result of the Unites States Securities and Exchange Commission's ruling, in January 2003, that requires mutual fund companies to disclose their proxy votes, a practice investment firms have done under the Department of Labor and which the AFL-CIO had been petitioning the SEC to adopt since December of 2000. The mutual fund proxy votes were disclosed for the first time on the 31st of August, 2004 (for the year ending 30th of June, 2004). The report details further the history of the regulations change, the AFL-CIO's position regarding this history, as well as their position regarding executive compensation, followed by a four-paragraph summary regarding the report's methodology. The next section of the report details its key findings, which includes: A) a significant variation with respect to the mutual fund companies' voting practices, B) A shortcoming in the new regulation, regarding the lack of information about the mutual fund companies' business relationships with the S&P 500 companies in question, which according to AFL-CIO, constitutes a conflict of interest in terms of proxy votes. The final section of the report offers twelve case studies, one for each of the S&P 500 companies the report investigated. Those companies are (in order of presentation): Allergan Inc., CSX Corp., Delta Air Lines, Inc., Kohl's Corp., Lucent Technologies Inc., Peoplesoft, Inc., Raytheon Co., Sprint Corp., Bear Stearns Co., Broadcom Corp., Delphi Corp. and Union Pacific Corp.

The CFA Institute hosts web-pages for The Association of Investment Management and Research (AIMR) Pulbications. Featured on the "AIMR Standards" sub-page are references to four texts, all of which feature an abstract preceded by the appropriate title headings in bold. Under each abtract is the order number, number of pages, member and non-member pricing and publication date for each text. The four citations are bookended by links to "Ordering Information" and "Online Ordering". The Standards of Practice Handbook: The Code of Ethics and the Standards of Professional Conduct (8th ed.) appears as the fourth citation on this page as of 26 April, 2006.

This is a doctoral thesis which examines the feasibility for pension fund investments that occur in the inner-city. Two opposing views on the most beneficial or prudent approach to invest pension funds are studied to assess their compatibility or conflict with inner-city investment strategies. A benefit-cost model developed by the University of Illinois at Chicago Center for Urban Economic Development (UICUED) is used to determine whether benefit-cost methodology could measure economic performance of pension investments. In particular, four AFL-CIO projects which use pension funds for economic purposes in urban communities are analyzed using the UICUED model to assess potential benefits each AFL-CIO investment would provide to Chicago's inner-city residents and to the City of Chicago. The findings reveal that benefit cost methodology could be used to measure quantitative and other corollary benefits produced when pension funds invest in local projects, and that pension funds could be prudently invested in inner-city projects. The findings also reveal the need for criteria and guidelines to increase the flow of pension investments into the inner city. In the end, the author offers a set of recommendations to develop a new paradigm to improve efficiency and effectiveness of pension fund investment to maximize financial and economic returns for all pension fund stakeholders, including the inner-city.

In this book, the researchers demonstrate a variety of forms of financial systems in different countries. For example, in the United States and the United Kingdom competitive markets dominate the financial landscape, whereas in France, Germany, and Japan banks have traditionally played the most important role. Their review of the complexity of financial systems lead them to argue that the view that market-based systems are best is simplistic, indicating a more nuanced approach is necessary. They point out that financial institutions are not simply veils, disguising the allocation mechanism without affecting it, but are crucial to overcoming market imperfections. An optimal financial system relies on both financial markets and financial intermediaries. Compiling many different insights and providing a comprehensive picture of financial systems, this excellent book is a must-read for anyone interested in an in-depth understanding of how financial systems have evolved in different countries and how they affect resource allocation and economic development.

The authors report that pension funds have become dominant players in financial markets and in corporate governance. This guide provides a paradigm both for articulating a fund's mission and determining what needs to be done to accomplish it. It includes real-world case studies and explores best practices used by some of the foremost pension funds.

In this book, Amin seeks to outline the varied nature of the post-Fordism debate in the way that he organizes the book into in four thematic sections--New Macroeconomic Designs; New Sociologies and Geographies of Industrial Organization; Policy and Politics Beyond Post-Fordism; and Post-Fordist City Lives and Lifestyles. Through presenting these themes, Amin provides more abstract discussions of the macroeconomic theory underpinning post-Fordism, through work on the organizational and geographical manifestation of new types of production, issues of regulation, governance and economic order, through to the realization of a 'post-Fordist world' within the urban arena. In so doing, Amin suggests where the main concerns of the various stands of the post-Fordist debate lie. The contributors of the book vary considerably in their enthusiasms regarding how far anything like post-Fordism currently exists, how far it could be reproduced in the new area, and which its implications are and how far they are progressive. This is a fine collection of essays, extending beyond immediate arguments about post-Fordism to wider reflections on the nature of contemporary capitalism.

In this article, Schleifer and Vishny explore a model in which the presence of a large minority shareholder provides a partial solution to this free-rider problem. The model sheds light on the following questions: Under what circumstances will we observe a tender offer as opposed to a proxy fight or an internal management shake-up? How strong are the forces pushing toward increasing concentration of ownership of a diffusely held firm? Why do corporate and personal investors commonly hold stock in the same firm, despite their disparate tax preferences?

This article proposes a mechanism regulating the price received by firms based on costs of identical firms. It also discusses the choice of firm on efficient level of cost reduction.

This book describes an alternative approach to the study of financial markets: behavioral finance. This approach starts with an observation that the assumptions of investor rationality and perfect arbitrage are overwhelmingly contradicted by both psychological and institutional evidence. The book presents and empirically evaluates models of inefficient markets. Behavioral finance models both explain the available financial data better than does the efficient markets hypothesis and generate new empirical predictions. By summarizing and expanding the research in behavioral finance, the book builds a new theoretical and empirical foundation for the economic analysis of real-world markets.

In this article, the authors explore the received wisdom on the separation of ownership and control, and the implications of this view on the performance of corporate management. They point out that managers often take actions that dramatically reduce the value of the firm.

This article presents a survey research on corporate governance. As well, it discusses various issues, including agency problem, external financing without governance, importance of legal protection, benefits and costs of large investors, specific governance arrangements as well as questions about best system of governance.

In this article Andrews reflects on some recent comments by Peter F. Drucker on the current state of corporations. Mr. Drucker, now in his 90’s, has been writing about the corporation since the Truman presidency when he wrote The Concept of the Corporation. In this article Drucker is characterized as being dismayed by the corporate focus on short-term earnings, stock price and market capitalization. Andrews explains how Drucker sees the primary job of management as being to strike a balance between short and long term objectives. Drucker calls today’s one-sided emphasis as “deleterious and dangerous” and he suggests further that customers and highly skilled employees are at least as important as investors. He notes that they may be one and the same thing since they are also pension beneficiaries, owners of stock options, and mutual fund investors.

This article examines the impact of the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS)'s Corporate Governance (a term used interchangeably with "shareholder activism" here) Program, which annually identifies ten public companies that the organization believes to demonstrate the poorest performance with regards to financial and corporate governance practices, in what CalPERS names its "Focus List". This is done within the larger context of, according to the authors, the separation of the ownership and control of corporations, in which the shareholders (as owners)' interests/objectives are not always maintained by the management that controls a given company. After the introductory section, the article reviews how corporate governance can break-down in a public company. Followed is an examination of prior research into the effectiveness of shareholder activism. The fourth section investigates the impact of the CalPERS' Focus List. An examination of shareholder activism by passive index funds precedes the paper's conclusions, which details various ways in which the CalPERS' Focus List has contributed to wealth-generation on behalf of shareholders. All of the paper's authors were, at the time of writing, employed by CalPERS.

This qualitative study explores the motivation and barriers behind employees who participate in virtual knowledge-sharing communities. The issue of trust outweighs even the employees understanding that they are participating in the best interests of the organization and their community. The study concludes that there is a need to address both knowledge-based and institutional-based trust in an effort to remove the barriers that impede participation in virtual knowledge-sharing communities.

This article reviews the debates associated with divestment in South Africa that happened in the 1970’s and 1980’s. An in-depth examination of the Sullivan Principles, which were expected to improve the working conditions of black South Africans, is undertaken as a means of determining the role that corporate accounting and disclosure has on social movements. It is argued that in the case of South Africa the Sullivan Principles were used to legitimize the continued participation of United States corporations in South Africa. As a result, accounting practices were not neutral technical tools but served as an ideological function by legitimizing the actions of capital. The authors demonstrate how in this case accounting served two contradictory social objectives and that so called “socially responsible” corporations did not facilitate social change in South Africa.

In this article, the author concerns about the fact that our industry seems to have lost focus on thoughtful analysis of finance issues over the last decade. Arnott explores the issue by posting a series of questions, such as 1. Why does the industry forecast aggregate corporate earnings growth rates that are faster than sustainable GDP growth? 2. Why do analysts not question pension return assumptions? 3. Why accept rising return expectations in a rising market? 4. Why allow actuarial or accounting assumptions to drive investment practice? 5. Why readily accept forecasts based on extrapolating the past? 6. Why not "normalize" return assumptions? 7. Why is the topic of expensing management stock options controversial? 8. When various "earnings" figures diverge, why not ask why? 9. Why is a negative equity risk premium considered shocking? 10. Why is the industry often surprised and distrustful when empirical tests fail to support accepted dogma? It is through questioning assumptions that the author encourages people to search for new ways of understanding the investment world.

This book contains ten previously published essays between 1982 and 1992, giving focus on allocation problems under increasing returns or positive feedbacks, taking a history-dependent or dynamic approach. These articles address positive feedbacks in the economy; competing technologies, increasing returns, and lock-in by historical small events; path dependent processes and the emergence of macrostructure; industry location patterns and the importance of history; information contagion; urban systems and historical path dependence; self-reinforcing mechanisms in economics; path dependence, self-reinforcement, and human learning; strategic pricing in markets with increasing returns; and strong laws for a class of path-dependent stochastic processes. These ideas are shown in powerful and convincing application to a variety of questions, including competition between technologies and the development of industrial clusters, such as Silicon Valley. This book presents articles that underpin the creation of this important and original work in economics. The volume provides the ideal introduction to and a comprehensive exposition of Arthur’s work.

This article explores the issue around socially responsible investing (SRI) regarding whether SRI outperforms or underperforms "conventional" (non-SRI) investing in a Canadian context. In doing so, the authors test whether there is a statistically significant difference between the performance of SRI-based investing and conventional (non-SRI) investing (as proxied by the benchmark, described below) in the Canadian market. In assessing the performance of SRI, they examine the performance of Canadian SRI mutual funds. The findings indicate that underperformance of most of the SRI mutual funds relative to the benchmark, but lower risk exposure. However, in all cases, any underperformance is not statistically significant (at the 95% confidence level). The performance exception is the Investors Summa fund, for which all statistics indicate outperformance. The finding leads the authors to assume that the average conventional domestic equity mutual fund performance is similar to the overall market performance. Hence, they suggest that since there is no difference in financial performance, those who engage in SRI are in fact better off. The empirical study introduces some rigour into the evaluation of the performance of Canadian SRI mutual funds by examining their returns with some well-recognized performance metrics and statistical tests, as opposed to simply examining gross returns.

In this article Athanassakos initially wants to confirm that there is a January effect in small and large stocks. Other questions posed are, if there is an effect how does it happen? Are institutional investors responsible for January effects in large stocks and individual investors responsible for small stocks? The results of the study indicate that institutional investors are responsible for the January effect in stocks for a wide variety of reasons. Some of the analysis suggests that since institutional investors factor in other economic indicators in January, it would be wise for other investors to determine, before they invest, if economic indicators would be viewed by institutional investors as positive.

This study undertook the task of reviewing literature and studies that examined the relationship between corporate social responsibility and profitability. As a result of their findings, the authors designed a forced-choice instrument based on Carroll’s construct (1979), which was tested for content validity and reliability, in an effort to eliminate the biases found in other studies. The methodological improvements in the study were not able to establish a positive correlation between corporate social responsibility and profitability. The authors conclude that some of the more intangible benefits of corporate social responsibility might be better studied with qualitative methods.

The author first enumerates a series of problematic assumptions that modern finance has made. Then he moves on and argues that economists have made a profession out of faulty assumptions. The author makes apparent that precision in assumptions matters only if it changes the conclusion. So, he deems it disturbing that, if we were to replace these faulty assumptions in finance with what we know, we reach some perverse conclusions, namely that the modern practice of finance does not reduce risks and may even contribute to market instability. Finally, the author concludes that it is certainly the case that despite developments that have been kind to the precepts of modern finance - i.e. regulation, more information and more adherence to quantitative financial analysis - the financial world is not markedly safer than before.

In this article, the authors examine the impacts of the differences between U.S. and non-U.S stocks relatives to U.S. stocks. By using proprietary data on NYSE specialist trading, the researchers show that non-U.S. stocks from developed markets have higher specialist participation and stabilization rates than U.S. stocks, while emerging market stocks have lower participation and stabilization rates than U.S. stocks. According to the researchers, such differences in liquidity are primarily due to higher information asymmetry and increased adverse selection risk. This leads to the conclusion that liquidity providers demand greater compensation for trading non-U.S. stocks, but this additional compensation is necessary to offset the higher adverse selection risk.

This paper explores the research investigating the profitability of insider trading. Written in 1979 the article is already showing that the more information a trader has the more they can benefit financially from that information. In fact in this case bank traders earned more positive premiums than ordinary insiders. This was especially true for buy trades. The fact that the actual premiums did not occur until several months later indicated to the authors that the concept of market efficiency was flawed and that the results were more due to the inefficiency of the markets for information.

Bakan in this powerful book argues forcefully that corporations have a legally defined mandate that allows them, without exception, to pursue their own economic self-interest regardless of the consequences. The book reviews the history of the corporation from the seventeenth century to the present day and proposes that governments have withdrawn from controlling corporations in a variety of ways. Governmental privatization and deregulation, it is argued, are areas were government is loosening its control on corporations, in spite of the fact that corporations can become pathological and can seriously injure individuals, society and shareholders. The author, to support his position, uses in-depth interviews with Nobel Prize-winner Milton Friedman, business leader Peter Drucker, and critic Noam Chomsky of MIT, and Hank McKinnell CEO of Pfizer. He also employs extensive research. The book concludes that solutions are possible through pragmatic and realistic reforms that address legal regulation and democratic control.

This chapter describes the role of pension funds in capital markets and promising development in economically targeted investments (ETIS). The authors make policy recommendations for the federal government of the U. S as well as they encourage the maturation and fine-tuning of economically targeted investments on the state and local levels. In addition, they propose four regulatory changes,1) Mandate participant representation on corporate pension fund boards; 2) Provide strong incentives for long-term investing by taxing pension funds’ short-term gains and providing credits for long-term holdings; 3) Develop rules and safe-harbor guidelines that encourage job-creating pension investments; 4) Via the Department of Labour, develop an intermediary, “broker” unit to make information available to pension fund managers about investment projects that promote long-term development. The authors believe that these changes would encourage fiduciaries both to develop a whole-participant, life-cycle portfolio strategy and to help move capital markets away from a short-term investment mentality. This chapter, together the book, offers an insightful analysis of one of the most fundamental, urgent problems of today. The information, analysis, and suggestion on policies are the timely and provocative ideals on investing in America.

Based on interviews over one hundred and fifty people, including labor leaders, and organizers, public officials, pension administrators and advisors, academics and other informed observers, the author argues that whether control over pensions capital depends on many factors. This book examines the internal policies, and external pressures which led to the decline of organized labor and their loosening of times with the private sector. It analyzes the urgency of the present crisis (in the 1980s), and the reason of the pressure. It reviews the historical development of pension-fund capital, the ways in which it is used, and the claims counterclaims made by the unions, states, and financial community to control over it. This book explores the potential for using pension capital as initial drive for the basic economic alternative in the U.S.

The authors discuss the role of pension funds in capital markets and developments in economically targeted investments (ETIs). They make specific policy recommendations for the U.S. federal government and urge the fine-tuning of ETI on both the state and local levels. The authors propose four regulatory changes: 1) Mandate participant representation on corporate pension fund boards; 2) Provide strong incentives for long-term investing by taxing pension funds’ short-term gains and providing credits for long-term holdings; 3) Develop rules and safe-harbor guidelines that encourage job-creating pension investments; 4) Via the Department of Labour, develop an intermediary, “broker” unit to make information available to pension fund managers about investment projects that promote long-term development. They view these changes as central to fiduciaries moving toward “whole-participant, life-cycle portfolio strategies” and “capital markets moving away from a short-term investment mentality.”

In this book, the researchers present the study of corporate control in Europe, launched by the European Corporate Governance Network (ECGN). The book is a collection of papers reporting how listed companies and controlled in different European countries. The data collection efforts of the country teams focus on varied aspects of corporate control relevant to individual corporate control relevant to individual countries provide a useful framework for undertaking international comparisons of corporate control and a detailed assessment of voting control as it currently exists in Europe.

This book is directed toward closing the gap between theory and empirical research and improving social scientists' capacities for generating theory that is relevant and useful to their research. It introduces an entirely new paradigm for doing rigorous research based on a qualitative methodology. Glaser & Strauss show how theory emerges from the data, as an ever improving understanding of the significance of what is discovered. This book also presents a robust way for a researcher in any field, but particularly in the human sciences, to approach day to day research. It is the living method of creativity and innovation, presenting a system for understanding one's discoveries and framing them to producing meaningful knowledge.

This article attempts to answer what appears to be a simple question but in effect is much more complicated. To answer the question as to whether economic development programs can be evaluated, the authors reviewed a complex array of factors. The various types of evaluations are reviewed with a critical analysis of these economic development evaluations. As a result of the analysis the authors raise concerns about the lack of more sophisticated evaluations. The authors then recommend and describe three types of evaluations including, community evaluations, firm evaluations, and community impact evaluations. This article also includes, in a very interesting way, commentary in two separate articles by Robert Giloth, David Fasenfest, respectively. Bartik and Bingham then provide a rejoinder section, which deals with the issues raised by Giloth and Fasenfest. The result is a fairly comprehensive examination of the issues related to the question posed.

This article focuses on the territorial relationships between innovation, institutions and knowledge creation. In reviewing the literature, the author indicates that it still remains unclear whether innovation processes can be conceptualized as territorial systems which develop in particular spatial configurations. The goal of this report is to contribute to this conceptual discussion. To do this, the author concentrates on the ‘systems’ notion and asks whether it makes sense to conceptualize territorial systems. To further specify and distinguish systems, the theory of social systems is used as a point of departure. Using this framework, the author defines national innovation systems as having the capability to reproduce their basic structure and the difference between themselves and their environment. This leads the author to argue that it is not easy to define regional systems of innovation in a similar way. Regional configurations of production and innovation rarely have the potential to retain structural independence, especially as the important institutions are typically defined at the supra-regional level.

Baue's online news article, dated 29 March, 2002, reports on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Harvey Pitt's 12 February 2002 response to a 1988 letter written by Ram Trust Services, itself inspired by guidelines created by the U.S. Department of Labor at that time, which directed the Employee Retirement Income Security Act fund managers to vote proxies with due diligence. Baue implies that the public controversy surrounding Enron was a determining factor that explains the fourteen-year response-time on the part of SEC. Several of the people quoted in the article also suggest that public disclosure of proxy votes would encourage accountability and transparency. As of 27 April, 2006, a link to an related article follows this one, on the same web-page.

This paper analyses whether good corporate governance leads to higher common stock returns and enhances firm value in Europe. In using Deminor Corporate Governance Ratings for companies included in the FTSE Eurotop 300, the researchers make comparison between performances of well-governed companies and ones of poorly governed companies. Based on these, they also examine the impact of corporate governance on firm valuation. The findings show a positive relationship between these variables and corporate governance. This relationship weakens substantially after adjusting for country differences. However, they found a negative relationship is found between governance standards and these earnings-based performance ratios. These findings seem to demonstrate that the lower the governance standards, the stronger the relationship between governance and firm value. Although a limited history of corporate governance ratings was available, the results give first insights regarding the impact of corporate governance in Europe.