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Curbing Short-Termism in Corporate America: Focus on Executive Compensation Robert C May 2014 Curbing Short-Termism in Corporate America: Focus on Executive Compensation Robert C. Pozen INTRODUCTION hort-termism—defined as judging company performance over a brief time period—has recently come under a barrage of criticisms from multiple sources— Sbusiness groups, think tanks, academics and lawyers.1 The emphasis on short- termism is said to be destructive to American businesses—discouraging corporate executives from investing in long-term projects and sustainable growth, while en- couraging them to inflate reports of quarterly earnings. Robert C. Pozen is a nonresident fellow The critics of short-termism argue that rapid trading by shareholders of public with Economic Studies companies is heavily pressuring company executives to focus on current earnings at Brookings and is rather than long-term performance. According to these critics, such a short-term also a senior lecturer at Harvard Business focus of corporate executives is exacerbated by the expanding rights of shareholders School. Prior to relative to directors and by the compensation rewards for brief increases in stock these positions, he prices. served as chairman of MFS Investment Management, vice Yet, long-termism seems alive and well in important aspects of corporate America. chairman of Fidelity Investors have gobbled up initial public offerings of fledgling companies with growing Investments, and president of Fidelity revenues and no profits—presumably on the belief that those revenues will translate Management & into profits over the next decade. Similarly, public shareholders have highly valued Research Company. shares of biotech companies, like Amgen and Genentech, which have been investing He also worked on President George W. large sums in long-term drug development. Bush’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security, as well as 1 For example: The Aspen Institute Business & Society Program, “Overcoming Short-Termism: A Call for served as secretary a More Responsible Approach to Investment and Business Management,” 2009; Policy and Impact Com- of economic affairs mittee of the Committee for Economic Development, “Restoring Trust in Corporate Governance: The Six for Massachusetts Essential Tasks of Boards of Directors and Business Leaders,” January 25, 2010; CFA Institute, “Breaking the Short-Term Cycle,” July 2006; and Martin Lipton, “Takeover Bids in the Target’s Boardroom,” Busi- Governor Mitt ness Lawyer, vol. 35, no.1 (November 1979), p. 101. Romney. To better understand the arguments on these topics, it is necessary to move away from looking at the “average” institutional investor and move toward looking at three subsets of investors: dedicated, transient and quasi-indexers. Most of the damaging effects of short-termism derive from the behavior of “transient” institutional ownership. Thus, the first section of this paper will dissect the composition of trading by different types of public shareholders. It will then go on to evaluate the three most popular proposals to curb short-termism2: » Altering the compensation arrangements of asset managers and corporate executives, » Constraining the rapid trading of stocks by public investors, and » Limiting the influence of institutional shareholders on corporate governance. This paper will conclude that: » The most effective way to curb short-termism would be to lengthen the time horizons in the compensation packages of asset managers and corporate executives, » Other effective measures to curb short-termism would be to limit “empty voting” by investors not owning shares and to discourage companies from publically projecting their quarterly earnings, » The proposals to constrain rapid trading, even if they reduced trading volume, would not significantly change the business plans of most corporations, and » The benefits from most proposals to reduce the governance influence of institutional investors would be outweighed by the costs of undermining corporate accountability. 2 For a comprehensive review of proposals to curb short-termism, see Lynne Dallas, “Short-Termism, the Financial Crisis and Corporate Governance,” Journal of Corporation Law, vol. 37, no. 2 (February 2012), p. 264. Curbing Short-Termism in Corporate America 2 TRaDINg PaTTeRNs Of eqUITy INvestors The criticisms of short-termism are based on several trends over the last few decades: the expanded volume of equity trading,3 the increase in stock turnover4 and the shorter holding period of investors.5 During the last few years, however, the trading volume6 and turnover rate7 for US stocks has decreased significantly.8 In any event, these data reflect average investor behavior. US institutional investors should be divided into three distinct categories on the basis of continuity of share ownership within a portfolio and size of stakes in portfolio companies. According to Professor Bushee, 61 percent of institutional shareholders were “quasi-indexers”, 8 percent were “dedicated” investors and 31 percent were “transient investors.”9 » “Transient” institutional investors hold well-diversified portfolios of publicly traded securities: they pursue short-term profits through high turnover of their portfolios and heavy use of momentum trading. » “Dedicated” institutional investors have substantial investments in a relatively small number of portfolio companies; they hold a high percentage (often over 75 percent) of their portfolio shares for two years or more. » “Quasi-indexers” fall between the two other categories of institutional investors; they have highly diversified portfolios of publicly traded securities, and also a high degree of ownership continuity since they seldom trade. 3 The average daily trading volume in NYSE-listed stocks rose from 2.1 billion shares in 2005 to 5.9 billion shares in 2009. See Securities and Exchange Commission, “Concept Release on Equity Market Structure,” Securities Ex- change Act Release No. 34-61358 (January 14, 2010), 17 CFR Part 242. 4 The average annual turnover for shares of NYSE-listed stocks has increased from 10 percent to 30 percent during the 1940-80 period to more than 100 percent in 2005. See CFA Institute, “Breaking the Short-Term Cycle,” supra Note 1, at 11-12; NYSE, “Report of the New York Stock Exchange Commission on Corporate Governance,” September 23, 2010, p. 12-13. 5 The average holding period for US stocks has fallen from seven years in 1960 to two years in 1992 to less than eight months in 2007. See Yvan Allaire and Mihaela Firsirotu, “Hedge Funds as Activist Shareholders: Passing Phe- nomenon or Grave-Diggers of Public Corporations?,” Working Paper (March 2007), p. 3. 6 NYSEData.com Factbook, “Consolidated Volume in NYSE-listed stocks,” http://www.nyxdata.com/nysedata/asp/ factbook/viewer_edition.asp?mode=table&key=3139&category=3, accessed January 2014. 7 NYSEData.com Factbook, “NYSE Group Turnover,” http://www.nyxdata.com/nysedata/asp/factbook/viewer_edi- tion.asp?mode=table&key=2992&category=3, accessed January 2014. 8 The holding period for US investors has remained roughly constant during the last few years. See Black Rock Investment Institute, “Means, Ends and Dividends: Dividend Investing in a New World of Lower Yields and Longer Lives,” March 2012, p. 7. 9 Brian Bushee, “Identifying and Attracting the ‘Right’ Investors: Evidence on the Behaviour of Institutional Inves- tors,” Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, vol. 16, no.4 (Fall 2004), p. 30-31. Curbing Short-Termism in Corporate America 3 The crucial point is that most of the damaging effects of short-termism derive from the behavior of “transient” institutional ownership—and not from “dedicated” institutions or “quasi-indexers.” Here are a few examples of empirical research showing the significant differential impact on corporate behavior of “transient” investors versus other investor types: » When the ownership of publicly traded companies is dominated by “transient” institutions, these companies are more likely to cut research and development expenses to meet short-term earnings targets than companies dominated by “dedicated” institutions and “quasi-indexers.”10 » “Transient” ownership is highly correlated with the likelihood of accrual errors and financial restatements by public companies, but neither is strongly associated with a high degree of ownership by “dedicated” institutions.11 » Aggregate institutional ownership is significantly correlated with material weakness in internal controls at public companies, but this significant correlation is mainly attributable to “transient” institutional ownership.12 In short, while average trading volumes in the U.S. stock market have increased and average holding periods have substantially decreased over the last few In evaluating the various decades, most of these changes were attributable to proposals to curb short-termism, “transient” institutional investors. Such “transient” investors trade heavily on technical factors like market we should target the problematic momentum, rather than company fundamentals,13 so they put pressure on the daily stock prices of public behavior of “transient” investors companies. However, the majority of public company shares are owned by more stable institutional investors, and avoid hampering the with lower trading rates and longer holding periods. legitimate activities of more Such institutions are less interested in short-term trading profits and more focused on monitoring stable investors. long-term performance of public companies.14 10 Bushee, supra Note 9, at 307. 11 Laura Yue Liu and Emma Yan Peng, “Institutional Ownership and
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