The authors review recent literature on the role of corporate financial reporting and transparency in reducing governance-related agency conflicts between managers, directors, shareholders, and other stakeholders—most notably financial regulators—and suggest some avenues for future research....

Asset owners (principals) typically do not manage their own investments and leave this job to delegated managers (agents). What is best for the asset owner, however, is usually not best for the fund manager. Additional agency conflicts arise when the asset owner does not know the quality and...

This study examines the association between real earnings management, governance attributes, and IPO failure risk. Using a sample of 4174 IPOs firms that went public over the period of 1998-2011, we find evidence that real earnings management and governance attributes are associated with IPO...

The sixth annual World Pensions Forum was held on 23-24 February 2017 at the Queen's House in the Royal Borough of Greenwich.Over 120 representatives attended: from pension and sovereign funds, central banks and government agencies including financial regulators. Topics discussed included...

If a bidder launches a takeover offer for a listed company being part of a stock market index, then index funds and exchange traded funds (ETF) as shareholders of this company cannot easily tender their shares without losing track of the index. This paper analyzes the impact of index fund and...

The spectacular rise of ESG usage in investment decision-making made public companies’ environmental and social attitudes critical more than ever as their shares are sold and bought in stock exchanges. Even though the enlightened shareholder value approach (ESV) by Section 172 (S172) of the...

While US companies mainly list their board of directors alphabetically, this is not the case for Chinese companies, most of which list their independent directors last. We interpret the listing order of Chinese directors as board hierarchy, reflecting power allocation within the board. Based on...

On November 14th, 2014, SUERF – The European Money and Finance Forum – and CNMV, Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores – the Spanish Authority for supervision of securities markets – jointly organized a conference in Madrid: Challenges in Securities Markets Regulation: Investor...

We provide new evidence on the relation between option-based compensation and risk-taking behavior by exploiting the change in the accounting treatment of stock options following the adoption of FAS 123R in 2005. The implementation of FAS 123R represents an exogenous change in the accounting...

I examine the effect of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) on the structure of executive pay. Specifically, I consider the increased board oversight implied by SOX, which is expected to weaken the pay-for-performance link under traditional agency models. Alternatively, if entrenched CEOs...