There are two essential features of mutual funds that differentiate them from ordinary corporations. First, mutual funds are not only separate legal entities; they are also financial products (or services), the means by which fund investors obtain professional investment management from investment advisers. To be sure, investment management is a fiduciary product, but it is a product nonetheless. Mutual funds have, therefore, a hybrid nature—both entity and product. This means that fund investors, too, have a hybrid character: They are both customers of the fund’s adviser and shareholders of a legal entity, the fund. This stands, of course, in marked contrast to ordinary corporations, whose shareholders and customers are two groups, distinct in law and in the marketplace. For an ordinary corporation, decision-making authority and oversight of all facets of its business rest squarely with the board of directors, and for this reason corporate directors are called upon to exercise wide-ranging business judgment over the corporation’s business and operations. This is not the case for mutual funds. Most notably, federal law, the Investment Company Act of 1940, leaves decision making over a fund’s core business — investing in securities—not with the fund’s directors or officers but with a third party, the fund’s investment adviser, who in nearly all cases has taken the risks and borne the expenses of organizing and promoting the fund.

Second, mutual funds are fundamentally different from ordinary corporations owing to the right of redemption, a right of the investor to withdraw her capital. This is antithetical to the organizing principles of ordinary corporations (at least public corporations), whose economic viability in the markets depends upon the ability to lock in shareholders’ capital. For mutual funds, however, their investors’ right to withdraw capital, to redeem their ownership interest from the fund, is a defining feature. The right of redemption is not only a financial right, it is also essential to the governance of mutual funds, imposing direct discipline upon a fund’s adviser. As each share is redeemed, a fund adviser’s compensation is directly reduced, as fees are tied to the amount of assets under management in the fund.

In light of crucial differences between mutual funds and ordinary corporations, this article argues that fund governance should be evaluated on its own merits, not as a derivative of corporate governance. The emphasis should not be upon expanding the “business judgment” decision making of a fund’s directors, but rather upon their role as monitors of legal and fiduciary duty owed by the fund’s adviser. The Article examines, in particular, three areas of rulemaking where the SEC has tended, mistakenly, to equate mutual fund governance with corporate governance. These areas relate to the distribution of mutual fund shares, the composition of fund boards, and affording a “proxy access” right to mutual fund investors for the nomination of fund directors.

The article concludes with recommendations as to how the SEC can improve its approach to mutual fund rulemaking. These recommendations include not only specific ways in which the SEC can conduct its rulemaking process, but also two types of mutual funds that can compete in the marketplace alongside traditional mutual funds. One type is the unitary investment fund, which would retain fund boards solely to serve as monitors of fund advisers’ legal and fiduciary duties, while leaving judgments over the competitiveness of an adviser’s fees to the marketplace. The other is a “crowdfunded” mutual fund that would allow for investors themselves, rather than investment advisers, to initiate and organize funds. 

To read the paper in its entirety, visit: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2568392.