Determinants of commitment and opportunism of institutional investors’ behaviour: an empirical investigation on Robo-voting Phenomenon

Purpose of the paper: Recent research identifies a troubling number of institutional investors that automatically follow the advice of their proxy advisors so that they can prove to have complied with their fiduciary duties in a practice known as robo-voting. Therefore, our central research questions are: How could the characteristics of institutional investors affect robo-voting phenomenon? How could robo-voting phenomenon favour the creation of new opportunistic behaviour, changing the scope of shareholder engagement? Methodology: Our paper directly addresses these questions by using ANCOVA (Analysis of Covariance) to test the effect of characteristics of institutional investors on the dependent variable under study. We use a manually constructed sample of coverage information from 123 Annual General Meetings held by large Italian companies in the 4-year period 2015 to 2018 and the voting reports of three proxy advisors. Findings: We show that such voting based on robo-voting phenomenon is restricted to specific types of institutional investors and it may be highlighted as a negative aspect of a duty to ‘demonstrate’ engagement on the part of institutional investors. Specifically, this duty could depend on location, strategy and category of institutional investors. Research limits: We refer only to the Italian market and it may be considered as a peripheral market by investors. Practical implications: We argue that legal enforcement of the conceptual and operational spectrum of engagement duties currently sits uncomfortably upon institutional investors and proxy advisors. Originality of the paper: We think it is important to consider how to promote shareholder engagement in general in a European context and at the same time curb negative activism by some shareholders.