The SEC's Proposed Proxy Access Rules: Politics, Economics, and the Law

31 Pages Posted: 21 Oct 2009 Last revised: 27 Apr 2010

Date Written: October 20, 2009

Abstract

The Securities and Exchange Commission has proposed proxy rules mandating shareholder access under conditions that can be modified by a shareholder majority to make proxy access easier, but not more difficult. From a legal perspective, this Mandatory Minimum Access Regime is so riddled with internal contradictions that it is unlikely to withstand review under the arbitrary and capricious standard of the Administrative Procedures Act A fully-enabling opt-in proxy access rule is, in contrast, entirely consistent with the administrative record developed to date by the agency and is easily implemented without delay.

From a political perspective, and consistent with the agency capture literature, the Proposed Rules are easily explained as an effort to generate megaphone externalities and electoral leverage to benefit constituencies allied with currently dominant political forces, even against the will of the shareholder majority. Viewed from this perspective, the Proposed Rules have nothing to do with shareholder wealth maximization or optimal governance, and reflect a traditional contest for economic rent common to political brawls in Washington D.C.

From an economic perspective, if the Commission nonetheless determines to implement an opt-out approach to proxy access, it will then confront the difficult problem of defining the optimal proxy access default rule that should be subject to a symmetric opt-out by shareholder majority (not the asymmetric opt out imposed by the Mandatory Minimum Access Regime, for which there is no support in the academic literature). The administrative record currently contains no information that would allow the Commission objectively to assess the preferences of the shareholder majority regarding proxy access at any publicly traded corporation. To address this gap in the record, the Commission should, if it determines to follow an opt-out strategy, conduct a properly designed stratified random sample of the shareholder base, and rely on the results of that survey to set appropriate default proxy access rules. The Commission’s powers of introspection are insufficient to divine the value-maximizing will of the different shareholder majorities at each corporation subject to the agency’s authority.

Keywords: Proxy access, Securities and Exchange Commission, corporate governance, directors, boards, shareholder rights, shareholder voting,, corporate elections, administrative law, arbitrary and capricious

JEL Classification: D72, D73, D78, G3, G38, K22, K23

Suggested Citation

Grundfest, Joseph A., The SEC's Proposed Proxy Access Rules: Politics, Economics, and the Law (October 20, 2009). Business Lawyer , Vol. 065, No. 2, February, 2010, Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University Working Paper No. 64, Stanford Law and Economics Olin Working Paper No. 386, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1491670

Joseph A. Grundfest (Contact Author)

Stanford Law School ( email )

559 Nathan Abbott Way
Stanford, CA 94305-8610
United States
650-723-0458 (Phone)
650-723-8229 (Fax)

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
630
Abstract Views
4,695
Rank
77,900
PlumX Metrics