Institutional Investors and Corporate Governance: A New Zealand Perspective

Abstract

In recent years there has been an increasing expectation that institutional investors should become more active in the corporate governance of companies in which they invest. The plethora of renowned corporate governance failures in the last decade has only added to this expectation. The first part of this paper examines the central arguments supporting increased institutional shareholder activism in corporate governance. The paper then explores, in the New Zealand context, the constraints against increased involvement and argues that the proposition for institutional investors as active shareholders is more normative than realistic, given both the legal and economical barriers that actively discourage intervention by institutions in their investments.