Great Expectations from Pension Fund Activism: Insights from an Emerging Market
Great Expectations from Pension Fund Activism: Insights from an Emerging Market
Agnieszka Slomka-Golebiowska Warsaw School of Economics
April 9, 2013
Abstract:
This study examines private pension funds’ preferences for shareholder activism in Poland in closely-held firms that dominate stock exchanges in emerging markets. The results show that the major institutional investors engage in a limited spectrum of shareholder activities. Most often they seek to contact the company’s management board members as well as supervisory board members if they are dissatisfied with a portfolio company. None of the funds even considers public criticism or litigation. The form of shareholder activism selected by different funds and the sequence do not vary substantially. The reasons lie in the internal benchmark. However, the largest pension funds tend to be more active than the rest. They choose low-cost and low-risk forms of activism, but they hardly participate in any corporate governance organizations. They avoid highly visible and confrontational activities.
About bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments.
KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community.
KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.
Bamboo Innovator 