Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1991
Abstract
Managerialist rhetoric puts the institutional investor between a rock and a hard place. The institutional investor is depicted as a paper colossus, alternatively greedy and mindless, but in all events a less important corporate constituency than that other kind of investor, the "real" shareholder. The unspoken corollary is that, regardless of the institution's investment strategy, its interests may appropriately be ignored.
An institution that trades stock frequently is considered a short-term shareholder without a stake in the future of the corporation. According to the familiar argument, the short-term shareholder has no more legitimate claim on management's attention than does a holder of options on the company's securities. Neither investor really cares about the corporation. They are only concerned, as is commonly known, with the fickle walk of market prices during the brief interval in which they are investing.
Disciplines
Business Organizations Law | Law | Securities Law
Recommended Citation
Ronald J. Gilson & Reinier Kraakman,
Reinventing the Outside Director: An Agenda for Institutional Investors,
43
Stan. L. Rev.
863
(1991).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/891