IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jfinqa/v55y2020i2p581-619_7.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Are Generalists Beneficial to Corporate Shareholders? Evidence from Exogenous Executive Turnovers

Author

Listed:
  • Betzer, André
  • Lee, Hye Seung (Grace)
  • Limbach, Peter
  • Salas, Jesus M.

Abstract

This study finds a positive, economically meaningful impact of generalist chief executive officers (CEOs) on shareholder value using 164 sudden deaths and 345 non-sudden exogenous turnovers. The higher a departing CEO’s general ability index (GAI), independently and relative to her successor, the lower is the abnormal stock return to turnover announcements. Returns reflect post-turnover changes in operating performance. Further, CEOs’ and successors’ GAIs are significantly positively related, but only for non-sudden turnovers. Consistently, for sudden deaths, we find positive stock returns to appointments of generalist successors. The results provide a market-based explanation for the generalist pay premium.

Suggested Citation

  • Betzer, André & Lee, Hye Seung (Grace) & Limbach, Peter & Salas, Jesus M., 2020. "Are Generalists Beneficial to Corporate Shareholders? Evidence from Exogenous Executive Turnovers," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 55(2), pages 581-619, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jfinqa:v:55:y:2020:i:2:p:581-619_7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0022109018001400/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Thomas Schmid & Daniel Urban, 2023. "Female Directors and Firm Value: New Evidence from Directors’ Deaths," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(4), pages 2449-2473, April.
    2. Baghdadi, Ghasan A. & Safiullah, Md & Heyden, Mariano L.M., 2023. "Do gender diverse boards enhance managerial ability?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    3. Colak, Gonul & Liljeblom, Eva, 2022. "Easy cleanups or forbearing improvements: The effect of CEO tenure on successor’s performance," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    4. Giovanni Ferri & Raffaele Lagravinese & Giuliano Resce, 2021. "Did the COVID-19 Shock Impair the Stock Performance of Companies with Older CEOs?," SERIES 02-2021, Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza - Università degli Studi di Bari "Aldo Moro", revised Jun 2021.

    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:cup:jfinqa:v:55:y:2020:i:2:p:581-619_7. 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: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jfq .

    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.