Shareholder activism can be seen as an active behavior of shareholders when they start to impose their needs to the company direction. In different markets, mainly in usa, individual and institutional shareholders have used activism strategies with the purpose of defending their interests. This work has as main objective showing facts, in the Brazilian market, that may indicative the existence of an activism strategy adopted by the pension funds in Brazil. As result it can be mentioned the growing participation of such funds in the voting capital of companies in the period 1995-2002. Besides that, it is also shown a comparative analysis of some performance indices of companies with and without such strong institutional presence in the voting capital.
sharehold activism; pension funds; ownership
