Shareholders and employees : rent transfer and rent sharing in corporate takeovers

The introduction of the ideology of maximising shareholder value and the rise of institutional investors in LMEs contributed to the development of an active MCC, which threatens managers with replacement if they do not act in the best interests of shareholders. However, some authors argue that restructuring for shareholder value through the MCC may negatively affect labour (Froud et al., 2000; Lazonick and O'Sullivan, 2000). It is suggested that such corporate governance practices may discourage employees from investing in firm-specific human capital and may pressurise managers into taking short-term profit-maximising actions instead of investing in long-term sustainable projects (Blair, 1995).