Engel/Hayes/Wang and Farrell/Whidbee provide new evidence on how firms weight alternative performance measures in making CEO retention and replacement decisions. While their results are statistically significant, firm performance continues to explain very little of the variation in CEO turnover. I argue we have probably reached a point of diminishing returns in estimating logit models that focus on the relation between CEO turnover and firm performance measures. We will have to consider other less-explored issues to increase our understanding of CEO turnovers and replacements. Analyzing age-related issues is one example.

Firms that alter their divisional configurations on average increase shareholder wealth. Gains appear to come from information about investment opportunities and increases in efficiency. Performance before the restructurings suggests poorly organized firms are motivated by market pressures to change their organizations. Change also occurs in healthy firms as part of the growth process. Restructuring often occurs where there is no evidence of takeover threats. While stock prices increase around the restructurings, there is a contemporaneous decline in earnings due to increased expenses. These findings appear inconsistent with the contention that the market pressures managers into focusing on short-run earnings.

Multi-bank holding companies file detailed financial statements on their subsidiary banks. The availability of these data allows for an empirical examination of the relation between accounting-based performance and personnel decision for lower-level managers. For our sample of Texas banks, we find that turnover of subsidiary bank managers is negatively related to subsidiary performance, while promotions are positively related to performance. Holding own-bank performance constant, turnover increases with holding-company performance, which is consistent with the view that turnover decisions are based on performance relative to a firm-specification benchmark.

This paper argues that academics, politicians, and the media have six commonly held but misguided beliefs about corporate governance. While Armstrong et al. (2010) discuss some of these misconceptions, a wider recognition that these beliefs are actually “myths” is important. They include: (1) a common definition of “corporate governance” exists; (2) a useful distinction is “internal” versus “external” governance mechanisms; (3) outside directors perform two separable roles: to advise and monitor managers; (4) research has identified “good” and “bad” governance practices; (5) a “good” governance index can be constructed; and (6) corporate governance “best practices” can be deduced from peer data.

This study examines the stock price reaction around the announcement of proposed changes in long-term managerial compensation packages. The evidence indicates that on average these plans are met with positive market reactions, i.e., shareholder wealth increases. Further, we are unable to differentiate the market reaction to various types of long-range compensation schemes. This result is consistent with the notion that firms with different characteristics will resolve their managerial compensation requirements differently. Thus no particular compensation package necessarily dominates all others.