Corporate communication and shareholder base retention: evidence from spin-offs

I ask whether corporate communication programs influence shareholder base retention. I use spin-offs to study the communication programs of the spun-off business units that inherit their parent firms' shareholders. Unit firms that initiate a communication program maintain higher levels of post-spin-off institutional ownership and retain more of the inherited institutional shareholder base than firms that do not communicate. An important benefit of communication is that these firms avoid the stock price pressure commonly experienced by unit firms following a sell-off by the inherited institutional shareholder base. This paper extends our understanding of the role of communication in retaining institutional shareholders.