We show that long-term compensation is associated with higher pay in the financial industry and this association is stronger in markets with high competition for talent. We argue that this evidence supports models of competition for talent based on retention motives.

This paper shows how chief executive officer (CEO) characteristics affect the performance of acquirers in diversifying takeovers. When the acquirer's CEO has previous experience in the target industry, the acquirer's abnormal announcement returns are between 1.2 and 2.0 percentage points larger...

We study CEOs with a career background in finance. Firms with financial expert CEOs hold less cash, more debt, and engage in more share repurchases. Financial expert CEOs are more financially sophisticated: they are less likely to use one companywide discount rate instead of a project-specific...