기관투자자의 주주행동주의가 자본시장에 미치는 영향- 신용평점을 중심으로 -

This paper examines whether and how aggressive shareholder activism of institutional shareholders are assessed in the capital market. Shareholder activism literature have argued that the shareholders influence corporate decisions to alleviate the agency problem and improve corporate performance. Accordingly, institutional votes against the management proposal in shareholders’ meetings can be viewed as an action of shareholder monitoring and positively perceived by the market. However, the votes against managerial agenda also signal that the managerial agenda is not aligned with the interests of shareholder, therefore negatively perceived by the market. In this paper, we examine how the capital market recognizes shareholder activism in credit ratings and document an empirical evidence that the percentage institutional votes against the managerial agenda is negatively associated with credit ratings. The finding supports the signaling hypothesis that institutional votes against managerial agenda is a signal of weak corporate governance, rather than an evidence of shareholder activism. This alerts the market about the effect of institutional shareholders on corporate governance. Meanwhile, some argue that the finding is due to active institutional shareholders allowing the market to interpret the information appropriately. The market would not have recognized the agency problem without the negative vote from institutional shareholders, and the negative impact on credit ratings indicates that the market opinion is consistent with that of institutional shareholders. The finding casts doubt on the effect of the regulatory proposal for institutional investors’ stewardship code for active engagement in corporate governance.