Institutional Investors and Mutual Fund Governance: Evidence from Retail – Institutional Fund Twins

55 Pages Posted: 9 Aug 2011 Last revised: 18 Dec 2012

See all articles by Richard B. Evans

Richard B. Evans

University of Virginia - Darden School of Business

Rüdiger Fahlenbrach

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne; Swiss Finance Institute; European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI)

Date Written: May 9, 2012

Abstract

Some investment advisors offer multiple versions of a fund with the same manager and highly correlated returns. But these “twin” funds are separate portfolios for different investors with differing abilities to select and monitor managers. We investigate whether retail investors benefit from investing alongside their institutional counterparts. We find that retail funds with an institutional twin outperform by 1.5% risk-adjusted annually. We demonstrate that institutional twin investors are more sensitive to high fees and poor risk-adjusted performance than retail investors. Using a matched sample of retail and institutional twin funds, we analyze whether the difference in sensitivities can help explain the better performance by focusing on changes to fees and portfolio composition of retail funds after the creation of an institutional twin. We find that after the institutional twin is created, expenses decrease and measures of managerial effort increase, consistent with the reduction of agency problems from greater monitoring.

Keywords: Governance, Mutual funds, Institutional investors, Performance sensitivity, Identification

JEL Classification: G23, G34

Suggested Citation

Evans, Richard B. and Fahlenbrach, Rüdiger, Institutional Investors and Mutual Fund Governance: Evidence from Retail – Institutional Fund Twins (May 9, 2012). Review of Financial Studies, Forthcoming, Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper No. 11-31, Darden Business School Working Paper No. 1907149, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1907149 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1907149

Richard B. Evans (Contact Author)

University of Virginia - Darden School of Business ( email )

P.O. Box 6550
Charlottesville, VA 22906-6550
United States
434-924-4030 (Phone)
434-243-7680 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://faculty.darden.virginia.edu/evansr/

Rüdiger Fahlenbrach

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne ( email )

Quartier UNIL-Dorigny
Extranef 211
1015 Lausanne, CH-1015
Switzerland
++41-21-693-0098 (Phone)
++41-21-693-3010 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://https://www.epfl.ch/labs/sfi-rf/

Swiss Finance Institute

c/o University of Geneva
40, Bd du Pont-d'Arve
CH-1211 Geneva 4
Switzerland

European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI) ( email )

c/o the Royal Academies of Belgium
Rue Ducale 1 Hertogsstraat
1000 Brussels
Belgium

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