Using a sample of 3,688 mergers and acquisitions over the period of 1992 to 2005, we find that post-merger equity risk declines roughly 18% in the year after the announcement. We find that post-merger equity risk is negatively related to the sensitivity of CEO wealth to stock return volatility...

To improve our understanding of the succession process we utilize a sample of 832 successions to examine firm and predecessor characteristics that influence the board's choice of a successor's functional and educational background. We find that outgoing CEO and firm characteristics influence the...

We explore the effect of director social capital, directors with large and influential networks, on credit ratings. Using a sample of 11,172 firm-year observations from 1999 to 2011, we find that larger board networks are associated with higher credit ratings than both firm financial data and...

To motivate managers to pursue shareholder interests, boards may design management compensation packages to reward managers for good firm performance. However, Gibbons and Murphy (1992) note that when CEOs are far from retirement, they have career concerns. In these cases, Gibbons and Murphy...

Whether equity-based compensation and equity ownership aligns the interests of managers with stockholders is an important question in finance. Early studies found an inverted U-shaped relation between managerial ownership and firm value, but later studies using firm fixed effects found no...

We examine the effects of busy directors on merger premiums and conclude that busy directors are not uniformly detrimental. We provide evidence that busy CEOs of acquirer firms are associated with lower premiums suggesting they do not shirk their responsibilities. Busy CEOs of target firms...