Voice through Divestment
22 Oct 2024
13:00 -14:15
Times are shown in local time.
Open to: All
Room W4.03 (Cambridge Judge Business School)
Trumpington St
Cambridge
CB2 1AG
United Kingdom
Join our Finance seminar, in collaboration with the Cambridge Corporate Governance Network
Speaker: Professor Marco Becht, Université Libre de Bruxelles
About the seminar topic
A common argument against divestment is that it discards voting power and has a small effect on stock prices. We argue that divestment is a statement of disapproval that aligns actions with words for effectiveness. We show that the Go Fossil Free divestment movement is a narrative with impact.
Viral divestment pledges depressed the share prices of all high carbon emitters, including those with no divestment. Peak virality coincided with a concurrent rise in the carbon premium and preceded net-zero commitments. The introduction of these commitments effectively recast divestment from a moral statement to a strategic exercise in risk management.
Speaker Bio
Marco Becht is a Professor of Finance and the Goldschmidt Chair Professor of Corporate Governance and Stewardship at the Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management at Université libre de Bruxelles, where he teaches master’s courses on corporate governance, corporate restructuring and responsible capitalism.
He is also a Visiting Professor at Imperial College London. Becht is a Founding Member, a Fellow, and the Executive Director of the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI), an international non-profit scientific association, and a Fellow in Financial Economics at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). He also co-founded the Global Corporate Governance Colloquia (GCGC) series. His research focuses on corporate control, institutional investor engagement, shareholder activism and responsible investment. He also has an interest in business history.
Register
No registration required. If you have any questions about this seminar, please email Nigel Low.