Staggered Boards and the Value of Voting Rights

This paper examines the impact of staggered boards on the value of voting rights (i.e., the voting premium) estimated using option prices. We find companies with staggered boards have a higher voting premium. Exploiting plausibly exogenous court rulings, we confirm that weakening the effectiveness of staggered boards decreases the voting premium. Given that the voting premium reflects private benefits consumption and associated managerial inefficiencies, our findings are consistent with the entrenchment view of staggered boards. Analyzing the cross-sectional heterogeneity in our sample, we find the entrenchment effect of staggered boards to be particularly pronounced for firms in noncompetitive industries and for mature firms.

Deadlock on the Board

We develop a dynamic model of board decision-making akin to dynamic voting models in the political economy literature. We show a board could retain a policy all directors agree is worse than an available alternative. Thus, directors may retain a CEO they agree is bad—deadlocked boards lead to entrenched CEOs. We explore how to compose boards and appoint directors to mitigate deadlock. We find board diversity and long director tenure can exacerbate deadlock. We rationalize why CEOs and incumbent directors have power to appoint new directors: to avoid deadlock. Our model speaks to short-termism, staggered boards, and proxy access.