INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR ACTIVISM: DOES THE PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT SKILL MATTER? ♦

Institutional investors are often seen as potential solutions for corporate governance problems and are requested to have a more active role in the monitoring and control of listed companies. In this paper we develop a model that, within a universal banking framework, allows one to conclude that, the greater the capacity of a financial group to generate capital inflows that react to the performance of mutual funds, the more the said attitude is likely to succeed. The paper also concludes that the efforts of supervisory authorities should be directed in particular to the relations between universal financial groups and companies in which these financial groups do not have a relevant stake. ♦ We wish to thank comments by participants to the 3rd International Conference on Corporate Governance, hosted by Centre fo