Shareholder Activism in Malaysia: Exploring a Missing Parameter

Abstract

The topic of shareholder activism has become an important issue for discussion in the corporate world, and debate continues to exist with regard to this matter. In the corporate world, the minority shareholders are the least protected corporate participants, due to their minimal voice in corporate decision-making. This paper is not empirically based but merely conceptual. Therefore, it is aimed at presenting the preliminary work for a study. The concepts of corporate governance, ownership structure and control, shareholder-companies relationship and majority-minority shareholders relationship are discussed, in order to gain an understanding of the concept and some practical perspectives of shareholder activism. From the discussion, several missing parameters of shareholder activism were derived. These missing parameters are considered red flags; there is a dire need to conduct further research for a better understanding of this important topic.

Minority shareholder activism in light of the Indian companies act, 2013

“…The concept of shareholder activism as observed in the literature is more researched and documented in context of countries such as USA (Gillan and Starks, 2009), UK (Filatotchev and Dotsenko, 2015) and European countries. Countries such as Malaysia (Satkunasingam and Shanmugam, 2006; Othman and Borges, 2016), Indonesia (Beebeejaun and Koobloll, 2018) and Mauritius (Prisandani, 2021) are scarce on the topic. One reason could be attributed to scattered ownership or fewer laws facilitating the involvement of investors in company’s working.…”