Companies can increase executive compensation by allowing dividends to be paid on unvested restricted stocks grants, also known as stealth compensation. Examining all S&P 500 firms over the period 2003–2007, we find that more than half of the dividend paying firms allow this practice. We look at whether this form of compensation reduces agency costs or decreases value for shareholders. We find that CEOs' stealth compensation amounts to an average of $180,000 in additional income, which increases the CEOs' cash compensation and total compensation by 9% and 2% respectively. Firms engaging in stealth compensation have higher dividend payout ratios than those not allowing stealth compensation. For all firms using stealth compensation, there is a reduction in average ROA and Tobin's Q over the long run. However, stealth compensation companies with potential agency issues see a meaningful improvement in their long run performance. For weakly governed companies, stealth compensation may act as a bonding mechanism which may serve to reduce agency costs and therefore increase shareholder value.

We examine 121 reverse takeovers (RT), in which a privately held firm acquires a publicly traded firm to obtain their exchange listing. The public firms, many of which went public during the initial public offering (IPO) bubble, are generally poor performers. Their shareholders receive significant wealth gains upon announcement, suggesting that these events may provide shareholders of distressed firms a way to recover some of their investment. We observe little post-event improvement in operations or profitability, and only 46% of the sample survives two years. Thus, while reverse takeovers provide alternative means of going public, they are risky and may fail to generate long-term wealth.