Executive Compensation and Capital Structure

Executive Compensation and Capital Structure
Author: Hernan Ortiz-Molina
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2006
Genre:
ISBN:

I examine how CEO compensation is related to firms' capital structures. My tests address the simultaneity of these decisions and distinguish between debt types with different theoretical implications for managerial incentives. Pay-performance sensitivity decreases in straight-debt leverage, but is higher in firms with convertible debt. Furthermore, stock option policy is the component of CEO pay that is most sensitive to differences in capital structure. The results strongly support the hypothesis that firms trade-off shareholder-manager incentive alignment in order to mitigate shareholder-bondholder conflicts of interest. The hypothesis that debt reduces manager-shareholder conflicts can explain some but not all of the results.

Executive Compensation, Capital Structure, Payouts and Cash Holdings

Executive Compensation, Capital Structure, Payouts and Cash Holdings
Author: Adilah Azhari
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015
Genre:
ISBN:

The aim of this research is to examine the relationship between CEO pay and firm's financial policies. According to agency theory, manager-shareholder conflicts of interest can be alleviated (and managerial compensation can be influenced) by debt. Debt lowers the level of free cash flow which managers are able to obtain because monitoring increases. This means that when the risk of bankruptcy appears, managers must consider the best financial interests of shareholders. Under agency theory, pay-performance sensitivity is smaller for high-debt companies when alternatives are available for high alignment incentives and high debt. The research objectives focus on three empirical chapters to explore the association between CEO pay and firm's financial policies for UK firms. The first study investigates the relationship between pay-performance sensitivity and debt as the explanatory variables. In the second study, the link between CEO compensation and corporate payout policy by segregating between total payouts, dividends and share repurchases are explored. Finally, the last objective examines the interaction between CEO pay packages and cash holdings of the firm. The research sample consists of 183 publicly traded companies listed on the FTSE 350 from 1999 to 2008. The estimates in the pay-performance study show mixed support for pay-performance and leverage because the negative coefficients for market debt have weak significance overall when median regressions are employed. Thus, it can be concluded that a firm's leverage has little effect on pay-performance sensitivity as a mechanism to align the interests of the firm's CEO and debt holders. However, there is strong support for the hypothesis that CEO pay-performance sensitivity increases with a firm's growth opportunities, which suggests that firms award higher equity compensation to attract managers with more talent. The second study in this research investigates how corporate payout policy is influenced by CEO share ownership, CEO stock options and CEO long-term incentive plans (LTIPs) in UK firms from 1999 to 2008 using Tobit regressions (for total payouts, dividends and share repurchases) and logistic regressions for the propensity of firms paying out to shareholders. The results show that CEO share ownership LTIPs have positive effects on corporate payout policy. In contrast, corporate governance characteristics do not show conclusive results which affect changes in payout policy. Dividend payout is significantly influenced by CEO share ownership compared to share repurchase payout. The findings support the notion that CEOs' share equity ownership is used to align managerial interest with shareholders in terms of cash payouts to shareholders. In the final empirical chapter, the study focuses on the effect of CEO pay and corporate governance on cash holdings. The study investigates the determinants of cash holdings based on free cash flow and the agency model using cash ratios (cash to sales, cash to assets, cash to market value and log of cash) as dependent variables. The analysis documents that CEO ownership and log LTIPs both have positive and strong relationships with cash ratios. The results support the hypothesis that equity compensation can be used to align managers' interests with those of shareholders.

Capital Structure and Firm Performance

Capital Structure and Firm Performance
Author: Arvin Ghosh
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 140
Release: 2017-07-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1351530178

Capital structure theory is one of the most dynamic areas of finance and forms the basis for modern thinking on the capital structure of firms. Much controversy has resulted from comparisons of the theory of capital structure originally developed by Franco Modigliani and Merton Miller to real-world situations. Two competing theories have emerged over the years, the optimal capital structure theory and the pecking order theory.Arvin Ghosh begins with an overview of the controversies regarding capital structure theories, and then statistically tests both the optimal capital structure and pecking order theories. Using the binomial approach he analyzes the determinants of capital structure while discussing the role of market power in determining capital structure decisions. Ghosh probes the questions of new stock offerings and stockholders' returns, and analyzes capital structure and executive compensation. He then looks into debt financing ownership structure, and the controversal relationship between capital structure and firm profitability. Finally, he discusses the latest developments in the field of capital structure.A concise overview of a major issue in business economics and finance, this volume provides a fuller understanding of capital structure influence on the financial performance of firms, and will certainly stimulate further debate. While hundreds of scholarly articles have been written on the subject this is the first book to test competing theories against measurements of firms' performance and their underlying capital structure.

Pay Without Performance

Pay Without Performance
Author: Lucian A. Bebchuk
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2004
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780674020634

The company is under-performing, its share price is trailing, and the CEO gets...a multi-million-dollar raise. This story is familiar, for good reason: as this book clearly demonstrates, structural flaws in corporate governance have produced widespread distortions in executive pay. Pay without Performance presents a disconcerting portrait of managers' influence over their own pay--and of a governance system that must fundamentally change if firms are to be managed in the interest of shareholders. Lucian Bebchuk and Jesse Fried demonstrate that corporate boards have persistently failed to negotiate at arm's length with the executives they are meant to oversee. They give a richly detailed account of how pay practices--from option plans to retirement benefits--have decoupled compensation from performance and have camouflaged both the amount and performance-insensitivity of pay. Executives' unwonted influence over their compensation has hurt shareholders by increasing pay levels and, even more importantly, by leading to practices that dilute and distort managers' incentives. This book identifies basic problems with our current reliance on boards as guardians of shareholder interests. And the solution, the authors argue, is not merely to make these boards more independent of executives as recent reforms attempt to do. Rather, boards should also be made more dependent on shareholders by eliminating the arrangements that entrench directors and insulate them from their shareholders. A powerful critique of executive compensation and corporate governance, Pay without Performance points the way to restoring corporate integrity and improving corporate performance.

Research Handbook on Executive Pay

Research Handbook on Executive Pay
Author: John S. Beasley
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 553
Release: 2012-01-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1781005109

Research on executive compensation has exploded in recent years, and this volume of specially commissioned essays brings the reader up-to-date on all of the latest developments in the field. Leading corporate governance scholars from a range of countries set out their views on four main areas of executive compensation: the history and theory of executive compensation, the structure of executive pay, corporate governance and executive compensation, and international perspectives on executive pay. The authors analyze the two dominant theoretical approaches – managerial power theory and optimal contracting theory – and examine their impact on executive pay levels and the practices of concentrated and dispersed share ownership in corporations. The effectiveness of government regulation of executive pay and international executive pay practices in Australia, the US, Europe, China, India and Japan are also discussed. A timely study of a controversial topic, the Handbook will be an essential resource for students, scholars and practitioners of law, finance, business and accounting.

Executive Compensation and Business Policy Choices at U. S. Commercial Banks

Executive Compensation and Business Policy Choices at U. S. Commercial Banks
Author: Robert DeYoung
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
Total Pages: 57
Release: 2010-08
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1437931006

This study examines whether and how the terms of CEO compensation contracts at large commercial banks between 1994 and 2006 influenced, or were influenced by, the risky business policy decisions made by these firms. The authors find strong evidence that bank CEOs responded to contractual risk-taking incentives by taking more risk; bank boards altered CEO compensation to encourage executives to exploit new growth opportunities; and bank boards set CEO incentives in a manner designed to moderate excessive risk-taking. These relationships are strongest during the second half of the author¿s sample, after deregulation and technological change had expanded banks' capacities for risk-taking. Charts and tables.

Executive Compensation and Shareholder Value

Executive Compensation and Shareholder Value
Author: Jennifer Carpenter
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 159
Release: 2013-04-17
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1475751923

Executive compensation has gained widespread public attention in recent years, with the pay of top U.S. executives reaching unprecedented levels compared either with past levels, with the remuneration of top executives in other countries, or with the wages and salaries of typical employees. The extraordinary levels of executive compensation have been achieved at a time when U.S. public companies have realized substantial gains in stock market value. Many have cited this as evidence that U.S. executive compensation works well, rewarding managers who make difficult decisions that lead to higher shareholder values, while others have argued that the overly generous salaries and benefits bear little relation to company performance. Recent conceptual and empirical research permits for the first time a truly rigorous debate on these and related issues, which is the subject of this volume.

Two Essays on Executive Compensation and External Financing Decisions

Two Essays on Executive Compensation and External Financing Decisions
Author: Eric Brisker
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2012
Genre: Finance
ISBN:

ABSTRACT: My dissertation examines the impact that executive compensation has on external financing decisions. In my first essay I examine the long-run stock and operating performance of firms following seasoned equity offerings based on the level of equity-based compensation the top five managers receive. I find that firms paying high levels of equity-based compensation experience lower abnormal stock returns and less favorable changes in operating performance in the three-year period following the issue than firms paying low, or no, equity-based compensation. Moreover, in calendar-time regressions, post-issue stock returns of issuers who pay high equity-based compensation do not load significantly on an investment factor, suggesting that these issuers have non-investment motives. Overall the findings support the premise that managers receiving high equity-based compensation act in the interest of current shareholders by issuing equity when they believe their stock is overvalued, while managers receiving low equity-based compensation do not. My second essay examines to what extent executive stock options received by the top five executives affects capital structure decisions and the debt-equity choice, and whether these effects are strengthened when a firm is near, or has recently received, a credit rating change. I hypothesize that executives receiving higher levels of stock options, especially stock options held that are in-the-money, as a percentage of their overall compensation are more risk averse due to greater sensitivity of their personal wealth portfolios to firm stock performance. As a result, they reduce the riskiness of the firm by reducing the amount of debt in the capital structure of the firm and issuing equity rather than debt when raising external financing. I also expect that the risk reduction is more pronounced when the firm is near a credit rating upgrade or downgrade, or has recently received a credit rating downgrade.