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Corporate Governance, Shareholder Rights, and Shareholder Rights Plans: Poison, Placebo, or Prescription?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 April 2009

Abstract

We examine the effect of poison pill adoptions on firm value, controlling for the adopting firm's preexisting corporate governance structure. We find that only companies with the most democratic governance structures, defined as those with the fewest preexisting protective governance provisions, experience significantly positive abnormal stock returns and significantly positive abnormal revisions in five-year earnings growth rate forecasts. Moreover, regression results indicate that abnormal returns and forecast revisions are significantly related to governance structure and not to board composition or subsequent merger activity.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © School of Business Administration, University of Washington 2008

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