A recent trend is that firms prefer to hire generalist CEOs with transferable skills (across firms or industries) over hiring specialist CEOs, but the consequences of this trend are unclear. In this study, we examine whether credit rating agencies consider a CEO’s general skills as a credit...

In this paper, we examine whether credit rating agencies consider a CEO’s general skills as a credit risk factor when assessing an entity’s overall creditworthiness and find that generalist CEOs are associated with lower credit ratings. The findings suggest that the presence of generalist...