IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecl/ohidic/2017-04.html

What is the Shareholder Wealth Impact of Target CEO Retention in Private Equity Deals?

Author

Listed:
  • Bargeron, Leonce

    (University of Kentucky)

  • Schlingemann, Frederik P.

    (University of Pittsburgh)

  • Zutter, Chad J.

    (University of Pittsburgh)

  • Stulz, Rene M.

    (Ohio State University)

Abstract

There is a widespread belief among observers that a lower premium is paid when the target CEO is retained by the acquirer in a private equity deal because the CEO's potential conflicts of interest leads her to negotiate less aggressively on behalf of the target shareholders. Our empirical evidence is not consistent with this belief. We find that, when a private equity acquirer retains the target CEO, target shareholders receive an acquisition premium that is larger by as much as 18% of pre-acquisition firm value when accounting for the endogeneity of the retention decision. Our evidence is consistent with what we call the "valuable CEO hypothesis." With this hypothesis, retention of the CEO can be valuable to private equity acquirers because, unlike public operating companies with managers in place, these acquirers have to find a CEO to run the post-acquisition company and the incumbent CEO may be the best choice to do so because she has valuable firm-specific human capital. When a private equity acquirer finds a target with a CEO who can manage the post-acquisition company better than other potential CEOs, we expect target shareholders to receive a larger premium because the post-acquisition value of the target is higher.

Suggested Citation

  • Bargeron, Leonce & Schlingemann, Frederik P. & Zutter, Chad J. & Stulz, Rene M., 2017. "What is the Shareholder Wealth Impact of Target CEO Retention in Private Equity Deals?," Working Paper Series 2017-04, Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecl:ohidic:2017-04
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2991348_code1664187.pdf?abstractid=2915325&mirid=1
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Keivan Aghasi & Massimo G. Colombo & Cristina Rossi‐Lamastra, 2022. "Post‐Acquisition Retention of Target Founder‐CEOs: Looking Beneath the Surface," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(4), pages 958-997, June.
    2. Guthrie, Graeme & Hobbs, Cameron, 2021. "How managerial ownership and the market for corporate control can improve investment timing," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    3. Han-Hsing Lee & Woan-lih Liang & Quynh-Nhu Tran & Quang-Thai Truong, 2024. "Do Old Board Directors Promote Corporate Social Responsibility?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 195(1), pages 67-93, November.
    4. Salvador Contreras & Manthos D. Delis & Amit Ghosh & Iftekhar Hasan, 2022. "Bank failures, local business dynamics, and government policy," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 58(4), pages 1823-1851, April.
    5. Franck Missonier‐Piera & Cédric Spadetti, 2023. "The consequences of earnings management for the acquisition premium in friendly takeovers," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(1-2), pages 308-334, January.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G30 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - General
    • G34 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Mergers; Acquisitions; Restructuring; Corporate Governance

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ecl:ohidic:2017-04. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cdohsus.html .

    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.