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Contribution Details

Type Working Paper
Scope Discipline-based scholarship
Title Uninformative Performance Signals and Forced CEO Turnover
Organization Unit
Authors
  • Raphael Flepp
Language
  • English
Institution University of Zurich
Series Name UZH Business Working Paper Series
Number 389
ISSN 2296-0422
Number of Pages 43
Date 2021
Abstract Text This paper provides evidence that corporate boards violate the informativeness principle in their forced CEO turnover decisions by failing to ignore uninformative performance outcome signals. I show that CEOs of firms with barely positive shareholder returns in the previous year are less likely to be dismissed than CEOs of firms with barely negative returns, even though this return outcome is conditionally uninformative. I observe a similar pattern for stock returns relative to the S&P 500 index return: a firm's board is less likely to dismiss its CEO if the firm barely outperformed the S&P 500 index than if the firm barely underperformed the S&P 500 index. Moreover, I demonstrate that the tendency of boards to consider uninformative absolute return outcomes has decreased over time, while their tendency to consider uninformative relative return outcomes has increased over time. This suggests that boards have shifted their focus toward relative returns while continuing to violate the informativeness principle.
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