Stephen Davis, Nonresident Senior Fellow regarding Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, and a much-acclaimed author, Professor, and commentator on governance issues, has written a brilliant analysisthat pinpionts what ailscorporate governance in this modern era we have been entering (without realizing it) for some decades now. The paper can be downloadede at the link below
http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2012/06/01-shareholder-davis
(From the Brookings Institution's web site) – Editor's Note: This report was released in conjunction with an event at Brookings on The Modern Shareholder: How a Short-Term Focus is Harming U.S. Corporations.
With Barack Obama trying to paint Mitt Romney as the embodiment of ruthless capitalism, and Romney countering that the president suppresses free enterprise, Corporate America is center stage as never before in a modern US election campaign. Stephen Davis argues that in the haze of the presidential campaign season, both candidates may be missing promising policy ideas to stimulate growth and responsibility.
For as much effort as policymakers have spent modernizing corporate structures, they have devoted comparatively little attention to the institutional investors they count on to oversee the market, Davis writes. This paper explores a policy agenda that mirrors corporate governance reforms, designed to strengthen the capacity of institutional investors to act as long term owners.
Davis offers a formula for prudent stewardship in the broader capital market and “reforms that put the interests of citizen-investors first hold out the prospect of making better citizens of corporations.”
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