Repurchases of convertible preferred stock and shareholder wealth

In this paper we provide the first comprehensive examination of the stock price reaction to announcements of convertible preferred stock repurchases over the 1981 to 2005 period. We document a positive and significant average common stock abnormal return of 3.27% around announcements of these repurchases. We test signaling and free cash flow explanations for the observed wealth effects by studying abnormal returns and changes in operating performance around repurchase announcements. We find that abnormal returns are positively related to size of repurchases and managerial ownership. We find no evidence of higher stock price reactions for low-q and high free cash flow firms. In addition, we find significant improvements in accounting profitability subsequent to repurchases, but not for low-q firms. Collectively, our results are most consistent with the signaling hypothesis.     

Americanization as a driver of CEO pay in Europe: The moderating role of CEO power

This paper examines the relationship between Americanization and CEO pay levels in Europe and how this relationship is moderated by CEO power. Based on neo-institutional theory, our study provides empirical support for a link between Americanization and CEO pay levels. Drawing on a sample of large listed European firms, our results suggest that various dimensions of Americanization, i.e., Americanization of the CEO, of the firm and of the industry, can be associated with higher CEO pay. Combining neo-institutional approaches with managerial power perspectives, we show that Americanization can have an even stronger effect on pay when the CEO is powerful.     

股利政策的股东财富效应:来自中国股市的经验证据

Based on the special separated equity management structure of the listed companies in China and using a sample of the listed companies with distributed dividend in 2003 and 2004, this paper tests the shareholder wealth effects of dividend policy in Chinese separated equity market. Results show that shareholders of non-circulating stock get a high return rate by cash dividends, and circulating shareholders obtain a high short-term return rate by stock dividends. Translated from Nankai Guanli Pinglun 南开管理评论 (Nankai Business Review), 2006, 9(2): 4–10     

CEO turnover,political connections,and firm performance: Evidence from China

In our analysis of 5738 CEO turnover events among A-share listed companies in China over the period of 1993 to 2019, we find that CEO turnovers on average hurt companies' market performance with significant negative abnormal returns in the event window. We then group the companies into four types based on whether the outgoing and successor CEOs have political connections, and then calculate the abnormal returns in the event windows of CEO turnovers once announced. We find that companies generally enjoy positive abnormal returns if they replace politically non-connected CEOs with connected ones. Such a positive effect is more evident among non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs), companies with worse performance, and companies with higher financial constraints. However, abnormal returns derived from hiring politically connected successor CEOs turn to negative following China's massive anti-corruption campaign in 2012. Our findings provide direct estimations of the economic value of CEOs' political connections for A-share listed companies in China and reveal boundary conditions that moderate the influence of hiring politically connected CEOs.     

后股权分置背景下CEO更换与投资者保护:动因及效应研究

以中国后股权分置为背景,从公司业绩角度研究引起CEO变更的原因及其变更的业绩效应和价值效应。实证研究结果显示,亏损及会计收益下降会显著地带来CEO的变更,而盈利企业在业绩下降时CEO变更的敏感性更强。同时发现,CEO变更具有较强的价值效应,能够显著提升公司的市场价值,但对会计业绩的提升作用不明显;对亏损企业来说,其业绩效应和价值效应都非常显著,且远大于盈利企业。     

CEO power and its effect on performance and governance: Evidence from Chinese banks

This study investigates whether CEO power matters in Chinese banks. We find that the effects of four power dimensions on banks' performance and board structure vary in their own unique ways. The CEOs with structural power are negatively related to performance but positively related to gender-diversified boards. Moreover, CEOs with ownership power enhance performance but are negatively associated with professionalism and diversification in the boards. Banks that have CEOs with expert power perform well and have gender-diversified boards. Meanwhile, CEOs with prestige power are likely to appoint politically connected directors to the board.     

房产和金融资产对家庭消费的影响:中国的微观证据

利用最新的中国健康与养老追踪调查(CHARLS)数据,研究资产对家庭消费的影响。在区分耐用品消费和非耐用品消费的基础上,分析房产和金融资产及扣除债务后的净资产在消费中的作用。实证结果显示:在房产拥有者中,房产的消费弹性在0.07～0.09之间,即房产增加100元,消费将增加7～9元;而金融资产的消费弹性比房产的消费弹性要小得多,当金融资产增加100元时,消费只增加2元左右;老年家庭房产的消费弹性低于年轻家庭;城市家庭的房产消费弹性高于农村家庭;借贷能力对资产的消费弹性没有影响。     

财务困境中CEO权力、高管层薪酬差距与公司业绩

以2005—2009年深沪两市上市公司为样本,设定财务困境公司与财务健康公司两个对比组,分析CEO权力对高管层薪酬差距的影响,以及薪酬差距、CEO权力和两者的交互效应对公司业绩的影响。研究发现:CEO强权在财务困境公司中不会导致高管层薪酬差距显著扩大,而在财务健康公司则会;财务困境公司中较大的高管层薪酬差距和CEO强权均能促进公司业绩的提升,且比财务健康公司更显著;CEO权力与薪酬差距对公司业绩的影响在财务困境公司中呈互补关系,而在财务健康公司中呈替代关系。     

The Impact of CEO Characteristics on the Internationalization of SMEs: Evidence from the UK

This study analyses the role of chief executive officers (CEOs) in the internationalization of small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). Specifically, it examines the impact of CEOs' demographic characteristics on the internationalization of SMEs. Based on upper echelons theory, resource‐based view and information processing theory, it is hypothesized that CEO characteristics like age, education, tenure, and political connectedness affect SMEs' international performance. Using the panel data analysis of 283 UK SMEs for the period of 2005 to 2015, this study provides evidence that CEOs' political connections and educational level are positively related to firm internationalization, while age negatively influences firm internationalization. Tenure is found to have a curvilinear relationship with SMEs' internationalization. Copyright © 2018 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Liquidity Constraints and Investment Opportunities: New Evidence from Large and Small Businesses in the UK

In this paper, we compare the liquidity constraints and investment opportunities for large and small businesses. This is done by examining the relationship between stock liquidity and investment opportunities in a sample of large and small enterprises listed on the London Stock Exchange. We find a positive statistical association between stock liquidity and investment opportunities, regardless of the size of the enterprise. This unique result in the London Stock Exchange suggests that firm size does not influence corporate investment decisions because there is no significant change in the cost of capital between large and small enterprises.     

Power and responsibility: How different sources of CEO power affect firms' corporate social responsibility practices

Does greater CEO power come with more responsibility? Previous scholarly work in this field entails divergent results on this question. Based on the upper echelons theory and CEO power literature, this study aimed to explore the mechanisms underlying how different sources of CEO power, including structural, ownership, expert, and prestige power, affect firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices and whether such relationships are moderated by firm visibility. Using a panel dataset comprising 6604 yearly observations of Chinese publicly traded firms from 2009 to 2019, we found that structural power is negatively related to CSR practices and that expert power is positively related to CSR practices, whereas ownership power and prestige power have no direct relationship with CSR practices. Our results show that firm visibility weakens the negative relationship between structural power and CSR practices and strengthens the relationship between expert power and CSR practices, respectively. Overall, this study reconciles the mixed results of previous studies on the impact of CEO power on CSR and integrates the effect of firm visibility as a contextual factor. This article concludes with practical recommendations on how to manage CSR engagement.     

CEO letters: Social license to operate and community involvement in the mining industry

This paper aims to analyse how the discourse of CEO letters and other factors influence community involvement and Social Licence to Operate (SLO) in the mining industry. The analysis is based on qualitative information disclosed in sustainability reports and CEO letters from 32 mining firms. Content analysis was undertaken to obtain data for the study, and then a regression analysis and a multiple correspondence analysis were used to test the hypotheses defined in the study. The results indicate that the CEO discourse influences how a firm expresses the importance of gaining its SLO, the philanthropic activities in which companies become involved and the destinations of the investments in the communities in which they operate. The results also show changes in the discourse between 2011 and 2015, which are, in part, explained by the difficult situation experienced by the sector during this period. The paper contributes to the Corporate Social Responsibility literature by integrating different theories from this field into the SLO framework. The analysis carried out and the results obtained are useful for both CEOs and Sustainability Managers, especially in managing their relationships with the communities where they operate or intend to operate.     

Doing right,investing right: Socially responsible investing and shareholder activism in the financial sector

In this article, we present an overview of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the financial sector. We focus on how socially responsible investment and shareholder activism have been integral parts of corporate social responsibility in the financial sector. We examine how the financial sector and its firms are evaluated and rated via a sustainability index, the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index, and show that even leading financial institutions do not employ proactive practices regarding socially responsible investment and shareholder activism. Finally, we provide examples of two companies, UBS AG and the Co-operative Banking Group, that do utilize proactive practices.     

Ultimate parent's board reform and controlling shareholder entrenchment: Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in China

This paper examines whether the strengthening of board monitoring at the level of the ultimate parent company reduces their expropriation from the listed subsidiaries. Using a quasi-natural experiment in China, we find that a high presence of outside directors on the ultimate parent company significantly reduce the parent company's tunneling from listed subsidiaries. Furthermore, the ultimate parent's board monitoring in reducing the tunneling is more salient when the ultimate parent company has strong management control in listed subsidiaries and complicated pyramid ownership structure in the listed subsidiaries.     

Internationalization process,impact of slack resources,and role of the CEO: The duality of structure and agency in evolution of cross-border acquisition decisions

This paper examines how the internationalization process evolves. We do so by examining the cross-border acquisition (CBA) decisions of multinationals under the contingent impact of slack resources and CEO power and influence. Grounding our arguments in Giddens’ (1984) structuration theory, we identify how and why path-dependencies associated with CBA decisions give way to strategic change, demonstrating the duality of structure and agency in this evolutionary process. Further, we show that organizational slack and CEO overconfidence affect this relationship, albeit in dramatically different ways. Our hypotheses are tested on a large sample of 4812 CBAs of U.S. firms during 2000–2010, across 41 industries and in 44 target countries. The results hold for acquisition trajectories of multinationals in both categories of CBA decisions: majority as well as minority-owned.     

Me,myself and I: The role of CEO narcissism in internationalization decisions

Internationalization decisions represent major objects of international business research; in this context, the respective role of decision-makers, i.e., strategic actors has been under study for now nearly 50 years. However, some important individual characteristics of strategic actors, which seem to influence individual decision-making in a significant way, have been – in contrast to general management research – widely disregarded. Among those characteristics, narcissism plays a decisive role. Trying to provide a first attempt to fill this research gap our paper aims at theorizing on as well as empirically analyzing potential relationships between narcissistic tendencies of CEOs and their internationalization decisions. The empirical study of major German manufacturing firms over the period 2004–2013 shows that CEOs with a high degree of narcissism tend to intensify business activities abroad in general while the expected effect on intensified activities in markets with a high psychic distance cannot be identified. These research results help to better understand the drivers of firms’ internationalization, stress the importance of recognizing managerial decision-making in the context of analyzing business activities abroad, and improve the prediction of CEOs’ decision-making behavior in general.     

Family CEO and board service: Turning the tide for export scope in family SMEs

Adopting the socioemotional wealth perspective, we argue that the presence of a family CEO in family SMEs negatively affects export scope, but that such negative effect is mitigated by board service. We develop and test a model that considers the synergistic combination of family management and another important aspect of family governance in the context of family firm internationalization: the service behavior of the board of directors. The empirical evidence from a sample of 248 Belgian family SMEs shows that governance is crucial to overcoming the problems of family management: family CEOs may negatively influence export scope, but board service is able to turn the tide so that the family CEO effect becomes positive. With such novel findings, we contribute to international business and family business studies     

Conflicting Objectives within the Board: Evidence from Overlapping Audit and Compensation Committee Members

The board of directors is an elite group that faces multifaceted tasks. The board needs to implement decisions on a wide variety of subject matter. These decisions are often delegated to specialized sub-committees within the board. The different objectives of each sub-committee can result in conflicting interests leading to decisions that are sub-optimal. For example, at times, the objectives of the compensation and the audit committee are not aligned. The objective of compensation committees is to grant CEOs compensation packages reflective of their performance. Yet, these compensation packages might contain incentives that could motivate CEOs to influence the financial reporting process in order to reflect better performance, increasing the risk of poor quality financials. In contrast, the objective of audit committees is to oversee the quality of the financial reports and the process that leads to them. Therefore, they would favor compensation packages that reduce the risk of earnings manipulation. We examine public companies that have overlapping compensation and audit committee members and find a higher proportion of CEO incentive compensation in companies with less overlap among audit and compensation committee members. These results suggest that separating the members within these committees might contribute to the effectiveness of board decisions. Data availability: Data are publicly available from sources identified in this paper.     

Hometown Ties and Favoritism in Chinese Corporations: Evidence from CEO Dismissals and Corporate Social Responsibility

Journal of Business Ethics - This paper provides a systematic analysis of how hometown ties, the most common and distinct bases for interpersonal ties to build upon in China, could influence...     

On the Causes and Effects of Exchange Rate Volatility on Economic Growth: Evidence from Ghana

What drives exchange rate volatility, and what are the effects of fluctuations in the exchange rate on economic growth in Ghana? These questions are the subject matter of this study. The results showed that while shocks to the exchange rate are mean reverting, misalignments tend to correct very sluggishly, with painful consequences in the short run as economic agents recalibrate their consumption and investment choices. About three quarters of shocks to the real exchange rate are self-driven, and the remaining one quarter or so is attributed to factors such as government expenditure and money supply growth, terms of trade and output shocks. Excessive volatility is found to be detrimental to economic growth; however, this is only up to a point as growth-enhancing effect can also emanate from innovation, and more efficient resource allocation.