Unscheduled stock options to target chief executive officers (CEOs) are a nontrivial phenomenon during private merger negotiations. In 920 acquisition bids during 1999-2007, over 13% of targets grant them. These options substitute for golden parachutes and compensate target CEOs for the benefits...

Acquirers do not benefit from hiring the CEOs of firms they buy, either in terms of merger announcement returns or long-run operating performance. This is especially true when the retained CEOs exhibit inferior quality (as proxied by target firm industrial efficiency or the target CEO's...

We investigate the determinants of gains to CEOs from large stock sales. Consistent with the literature, we find that some CEOs benefit from inside information by strategically timing sales. We also find that internal accounting information can be used to predict such timing. Furthermore, sales...

Full Paper is available at: "https://www.ssrn.com/abstract=2526509" https://www.ssrn.com/abstract=2526509In this Internet Appendix, we perform further tests in order (i) to assess the robustness of the main findings, (ii) to evaluate whether the magnitude of our results changes in different...