While in the US stock-based incentives are commonly used since the 50s of the last century, in Germany they were invented only some ten years ago. Even in 1996 firms faced considerable regulatory difficulties when willing to grant such incentives. In the meantime the legal environment has...

We develop a model of managerial compensation structure and asset risk choice. The model provides predictions about how inside debt features affect the relation between credit spreads and compensation components. First, inside debt reduces credit spreads only if it is unsecured. Second, inside...

Investors and academics increasingly criticize that features of employee stock option (ESO) programs reflect rent-extraction by managers (managerial power view). The authors use a unique European dataset to investigate the relationship between the design of ESO programs and corporate governance...

Financial strategy is about how companies raise funds and manage them within their organizations. Corporate governance is relevant to both of these aspects, and an understanding of corporate governance is vital for an appreciation of corporate finance. This chapter from Corporate Financial...

On 27 February 2013, the European Union (EU) reached a provisional deal to limit the amount of bankers' bonuses to the amount of fixed remuneration (i.e., a one-to-one ratio); the cap could be increased to 2:1 with the backing of a supermajority of shareholders. I demonstrate that the pending EU...

The concern that out-of-the-money stock options are not an effective way to motivate managers has led boards of directors to consider measures such as lowering the exercise price of underwater options, or issuing new option grants, to restore the incentive managers have to increase shareholder...

Conventional stock options, say their critics, do not adequately discriminate between strong and weak managers because their value fluctuates with the performance of the overall market. Such critics propose replacing conventional stock options with options whose payoff depends on firm...

Increased media exposure to layoffs and corporate quarterly financial reporting have created arguable a common perception - especially favored by the media itself - that the companies have been forced to improve their financial performance from quarter to quarter. Academically the relevant...

This paper explores the interaction between the internal corporate control mechanism of acquiring firms - managerial ownership and board dismissal of managers - and the incidence of efficient takeovers under asymmetric information about the type of manager of the acquiring firms. The internal...

Due to a variety of liquidity constraints, CEOs of U.S. corporations hold highly undiversified portfolios of stock and options of their own firms. This results in an illiquidity discount, measured by the difference between the market value and the executive value of their holdings. We argue that...