Search

Improvements in transparency at the country level have modified the relevance of bank debt maturity as a control mechanism. The novelty of this research is that we provide empirical evidence that the maturity of bank borrowing is contingent on the characteristics of the regulatory and the institutional setting about corporate governance. The main implication of our paper is that corporate governance rules have greater influence in civil-law countries than in common-law countries in promoting efficiency in the use of bank debt maturity. The value of this paper is that our results confirm that the implementation of similar regulations on transparency across countries with different legal systems favors the alignment of the role played by short-term bank debt in addressing asymmetric information, agency costs, and inefficient liquidation.

O ativismo de acionistas traduz-se por uma postura ativa destes quando passam a impor suas demandas à direção da empresa. Acionistas individuais e institucionais têm utilizado, em distintos mercados - notadamente nos EUA -, estratégias de ativismo buscando defender seus interesses. Este trabalho tem o objetivo de apresentar indícios, no mercado brasileiro, que podem ser indicativos de uma estratégia de ativismo adotada pelos fundos de pensão no Brasil. Como resultado, se aponta um crescimento na participação desses fundos no capital votante no período 1995-2002. Além da participação na propriedade, faz-se também uma análise comparativa de índices de desempenho de empresas com forte presença desses investidores institucionais em contraste com as demais.Shareholder activism can be seen as an active behavior of shareholders when they start to impose their needs to the company direction. In different markets, mainly in usa, individual and institutional shareholders have used activism strategies with the purpose of defending their interests. This work has as main objective showing facts, in the Brazilian market, that may indicative the existence of an activism strategy adopted by the pension funds in Brazil. As result it can be mentioned the growing participation of such funds in the voting capital of companies in the period 1995-2002. Besides that, it is also shown a comparative analysis of some performance indices of companies with and without such strong institutional presence in the voting capital.