Mutual Funds Activism (?) in Corporate Governance

Abstract

American mutual funds industry has been characterised, in the last 20 years, by a wide growth, which led mutual funds to become, as a whole, the biggest American institutional investors. Notwithstanding their dimensions, mutual funds can not be considered "active" institutional investors: they rarely conduct proxy fights or bring class action against management. There are many reasons to explain mutual funds' passivity in corporate governance, some depending on mutual funds' federal regulations, other depending on the characteristics of American mutual funds' industry. Is this paper I will describe the principal developments of mutual funds' industry, and 1 try to examine the principal reasons of mutual funds' passivity.