IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/acctbr/v47y2017i6p695-729.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does obfuscating excessive CEO pay work? The influence of remuneration report readability on say-on-pay votes

Author

Listed:
  • Reggy Hooghiemstra
  • Yu Flora Kuang
  • Bo Qin

Abstract

This paper assesses whether reducing ‘readability’ is an effective obfuscation strategy for influencing the level of shareholder say-on-pay voting dissent in firms with excessive CEO pay. Based on a sample of UK-listed firms, our results indicate that in cases of excessive CEO pay, a less readable remuneration report is associated with reduced say-on-pay voting dissent. However, the effect of the obfuscation strategy diminishes as institutional ownership increases. Using obscurely written remuneration reports may even backfire (i.e. associated with increased voting dissent) when a firm’s majority shares are held by institutional investors. Our results are robust to controlling for compensation contract complexity as well as other alternative explanations. The results are also robust to various controls for endogeneity including a two-stage instrumental variable approach and propensity-score matching. Our findings offer regulatory implications that regulators could minimize the use of ‘obfuscation’ in pay-related disclosures by prescribing how information is to be presented.

Suggested Citation

  • Reggy Hooghiemstra & Yu Flora Kuang & Bo Qin, 2017. "Does obfuscating excessive CEO pay work? The influence of remuneration report readability on say-on-pay votes," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(6), pages 695-729, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:acctbr:v:47:y:2017:i:6:p:695-729
    DOI: 10.1080/00014788.2017.1300516
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00014788.2017.1300516
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00014788.2017.1300516?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jörn Obermann, 2020. "Let’s talk about money! Assessing the link between firm performance and voluntary Say-on-Pay votes," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 90(1), pages 109-135, February.
    2. Ammad Ahmed & Muhammad Atif & Ernest Gyapong, 2021. "Boardroom gender diversity and CEO pay deviation: Australian evidence," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 61(2), pages 3135-3170, June.
    3. Steven S. Crawford & Karen K. Nelson & Brian R. Rountree, 2021. "Mind the gap: CEO–employee pay ratios and shareholder say‐on‐pay votes," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(1-2), pages 308-337, January.
    4. Danial Hemmings & Lynn Hodgkinson & Gwion Williams, 2020. "It's OK to pay well, if you write well: The effects of remuneration disclosure readability," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(5-6), pages 547-586, May.
    5. Lozano-Reina, Gabriel & Sánchez-Marín, Gregorio & Baixauli-Soler, J. Samuel, 2022. "Say-on-Pay voting dispersion in listed family and non-family firms: A panel data analysis," Journal of Family Business Strategy, Elsevier, vol. 13(1).
    6. Ibrahim, Salma & Li, Hao & Yan, Yan & Zhao, Jinsha, 2021. "Pay me a single figure! Assessing the impact of single figure regulation on CEO pay," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    7. Nicola Cucari, 2019. "Determinants of say on pay vote: a configurational analysis," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 15(3), pages 837-856, September.
    8. Fahd Alduais & Nashat Ali Almasria & Abeer Samara & Ali Masadeh, 2022. "Conciseness, Financial Disclosure, and Market Reaction: A Textual Analysis of Annual Reports in Listed Chinese Companies," IJFS, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-22, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:acctbr:v:47:y:2017:i:6:p:695-729. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RABR20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.