Unitary board structure has two potential advantages over multiple board structure: enhancing information sharing among funds and improving bargaining power of mutual fund boards against fund management companies. Unitary board structure can be thought of as the family strategy for fund shareholders across funds. Applying the consensus-building model of Caillaud and Tirole (2007) to the mutual fund context, we infer that fund advisers may benefit from ambiguity among
board members’ views toward proposals from fund advisers. Enhanced information sharing will facilitate communication among board members and reduce the ambiguity. A unitary board representing all funds in the fund family may also have more bargaining power against fund advisers and other service providers because the stake is bigger. In addition, a unitary board enables management companies to share costs among different funds and to realize economies of scale including director compensation. Finally, a unitary board can better evaluate the overall benefits resulting from economies of scale and demand advisory contracts more favorable
to fund investors