Predicting corporate voting outcomes for shareholder sponsored proposals

We analyze voting support for shareholder sponsored corporate governance proposals. Specifically, we study the impact of institutional share ownership, board structure, firm size, historical share performance, and proposal sponsor on the proportion of yes votes received. We use data from 253 shareholder proposals that came to a vote in 2013 for our analysis. Among our findings are the following: (1) pension funds sponsored 14 of the 20 proposals receiving the highest level of voting support while individuals and labor unions sponsored 16 of the 20 proposals receiving the lowest voting support; (2) firms with a classified board received higher proposal support than those without a classified board; (3) firms with a higher percentage of institutional ownership received greater voter support, and (4) firm size was inversely related to voting support.