Union pension funds manage approximately $3.5 trillion in retirement assets on behalf of public and private sector employees covered by collective bargaining agreement. They are also very active in the proxy process, sponsoring approximately one-third of the shareholder proposals that are...

Prior research argues that a manager whose wealth is more sensitive to changes in the firm's stock price has a greater incentive to misreport. However, if the manager is risk-averse and misreporting increases both equity values and equity risk, the sensitivity of the manager's wealth to changes...

Corporate monitors are important participants in corporate governance systems. Monitors include the board of directors, the general counsel, and internal and external auditors. Monitors are paid by the organization but their responsibilities largely or mostly non-managerial.How should monitors...

It is very difficult for shareholders to know detailed information about CEO succession planning among the companies they have invested in. Although CEO deaths are rare, the sudden death of a CEO can provide insight into the quality of succession planning and governance of a company. Whereas...

The topic of executive compensation elicits strong emotions among corporate stakeholders and practitioners. On the one hand are those who believe that chief executive officers in the United States are overpaid. On the other hand are those who believe that CEOs are simply paid the going...

The press and other third-party observers frequently discuss executive compensation. However, executive compensation figures are not always what they seem. Executive pay packages contain a diverse mix of cash and non-cash incentives, payable in one or multiple years and subject to accruals,...

The board of directors has a long list of responsibilities in all areas of governance. However, to many, the fundamental obligations of the board are simple and distill down to two: 1) evaluate and approve the corporate strategy and 2) hire and fire the CEO. The Hewlett-Packard Company has had...

In recent years, NCAA football has been rocked by a string of high-profile violations, including those at USC, Ohio State, the University of Miami, and Auburn. In many ways, these violations were similar to the governance breakdowns at financial and other corporations leading up to the financial...

Executive compensation has become one of the most contentious topics in corporate governance. However, public perception about executive pay suffers from many misconceptions. These include the notions that:1. The ratio of CEO-to-average-worker pay is a useful statistic:2. Compensation...

Say on pay is the practice of granting shareholders the right to vote on a company's executive compensation program at the annual shareholder meeting. Under the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, publicly traded companies in the U.S. are required to adopt say on pay. Advocates of this approach believe that...