SSRN-Which Institutional Investors Monitor? Evidence from Acquisition Activity by Lily Qiu

SSRN-Which Institutional Investors Monitor? Evidence from Acquisition Activity by Lily Qiu: "Which Institutional Investors Monitor? Evidence from Acquisition Activity by LILY QIU "


There has been quite a bit of evidence of late that all shareholders do not do equal jobs of monitoring management. For example Barclay, Holderness, and Sheehan find that private placements (which have been long seen as a means of improving monitoring) may actually reduce monitoring and help to entrench managers because many of those purchasing the blocks are not actively monitoring management.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=471720

Yale’s Lily Qiu dives into this question further and finds evidence that suggests that large public pension funds (PPF) may do a better job monitoring than insurance or mutual funds. Qiu's case is built on the finding that firms with large public pension fund holdings “engage in less merger and acquisitions activity.” Moreover, when M&A deals are done, Qiu reports that “The presence of PPF ownership is…significantly and positively associated with long-term M&A abnormal returns…[and]with post-M&A improvement in asset turnover rates.”

Not convinced yet? Qiu is not done: “the negative association between PPF ownership and M&A likelihood is concentrated among cash-rich and low Q firms; among M&A firms, those with higher PPF ownership are less likely to engage in "buying growth" acquisitions.”

A quick explanation of the last sentence? Ok, low Q values (technically Tobin's Q which is market value divided by replacement value) and high cash firms are often cited as being where the Free cash flow problem (see Jensen 1986) is the worst.


Thus, at these firms mergers and acquisitions are often seen as negative projects that only serve to make managers better off. That it is at this
type of firm where the PPF influence seems the strongest, suggests that PPF are stronger monitors of management than other blockholders.


http://papers.ssrn.com/paper.taf?abstract_id=521803

Cite: Qiu, Lily, "Which Institutional Investors Monitor? Evidence from Acquisition Activity" (December 2003).
Yale ICF Working Paper No. 04-15. http://ssrn.com/abstract=521803