U.S. sponsors of defined-benefit pension plans integrate their pension plans into their overall financial management. Plan contributions are smaller and funding levels lower for plan sponsors that have less cash, are less profitable and are financially distressed. Moreover, plan sponsors make more aggressive pension plan assumptions if they have lower cash holdings and profit margins. While there is no evidence that plan sponsors generally take more risk with their pension plan assets if they have high business or financial risk, there is some evidence of risk shifting during major economic downturns such as the global financial crisis. As a result, funding rules, pension plan assumptions and investment policies are areas to consider for pension policy to protect plan beneficiaries.

The authors have been editors of the Journal of Corporate Finance for nineteen years and are now stepping down. Here we offer some observations from our years as editors of the Journal. We hope they are useful to the new editors, the publisher, referees and authors. Thank you to all those who helped us in our task as editors.

Promotion decisions for professors are critical for any university and this is especially true when promotion also involves the granting of tenure. In this paper, we report the number of publications for Finance professors promoted to Associate or Full Professor at schools similar to the University of Georgia and also at the Top 10 Finance Departments. We also provide evidence on citations of the individuals' research. Our data reveal similarities in terms of the total number of articles published (between 6 and 8 for promotion to Associate Professor), the number of articles published in Finance “A” journals (about 3), and the number of citations between peer and aspirant schools. We find evidence that Associate Professors at Top 10 Departments have slightly more “A” articles and receive more citations to their work than those at lower ranked institutions. We find similar results for those promoted to Full Professor – similar publication records but with more “A” publications and citations for those in Top 10 Departments. Our paper provides up-to-date information on some of the factors considered for promotion of Finance professors. However, the much more difficult part of promotion decisions is determining the impact of past research and the potential for future contributions. In addition, teaching, service, and other departmental contributions are key to the promotion decision.

Private equity firms that are listed on stock exchanges commit to extensive public disclosures. By contrast, unlisted private equity firms communicate privately with partner investors. We examine the reporting quality of portfolio companies that are backed by listed and unlisted private equity firms worldwide. We find that portfolio companies that are backed by listed private equity firms report lower abnormal accruals, recognize losses faster, and experience higher post-IPO stock returns. These findings are stronger for smaller and European portfolio companies and those that receive direct private equity investments. Overall, our findings suggest that the public reporting model of listed private equity firms leads to greater capital market benefits than the private reporting model of unlisted private equity firms.

Tighter bank lending standards could increase firms' post-hedging currency exposure by reducing firms' ability to fund hedging (funding channel) and/or by constraining counterparties' capacity to facilitate hedging (capacity channel). We find that tighter lending standards materially increase firms' exposure. In addition, we find no support for a funding-channel effect as firms' internal liquidity does not mitigate the impact of lending standards on exposure, indicating that the impact is through the capacity channel. Finally, we find a negative association between lending standards and aggregate transactions in currency derivatives, bolstering support for a capacity-channel effect. Our results have implications for firms' hedging policy and the bank lending channel of monetary policy transmission.

We investigate the impact of debt covenants on acquisition characteristics. We find that acquirers with covenants pay lower merger premiums, make more focused acquisitions, and engage in acquisitions with higher synergy gains and higher acquirer returns around deal announcement, relative to those without. All these results are more pronounced with stricter debt covenants. Additionally, acquirers with covenants pay with a lower share fraction. In particular, capital covenants, which restrict debt issuance, are positively related to the share fraction, while performance covenants, which affect the stock of equity capital, result in a lower share fraction of payment. All our results hold only for acquirers who have not violated covenants, reemphasizing the importance of debt covenants and the threat they entail on corporate policies even before nearing violation states. Results also, generally, hold for badly governed firms, suggesting that creditors' monitoring role through debt covenants and borrower's effective corporate governance are substitutes.

We find that the level of short interest in a firm's stock significantly predicts future seasoned equity offers (SEOs). The probability of an SEO announcement increases by 34% (decreases by 49%) for firms in the top (bottom) quintile of short interest. We identify a causal impact of short interest on SEO issuance using a novel instrument for short interest based on future litigation filings in close geographical proximity to hedge fund centers. Our findings suggest that corporate decisions can be triggered by the aggregate trading activity of sophisticated outside investors.

We survey the growing academic literature using Abel Noser data, including 55 publications thus far. We analyze publication patterns to explore how the availability of a specialized microstructure dataset propagates across different areas within finance and into other disciplines such as accounting. Of note, we identify corporate finance and accounting as the most under-researched areas that offer promising opportunities for future academic research using the data. To provide guidance for researchers interested in using Abel Noser data, we analyze institutional trading using transaction-level data spanning more than 12 years and covering 233 million transactions with $37 trillion traded. We provide background information on the origin and history of the data, offer suggestions for cleaning and using the data, and discuss (dis)advantages of Abel Noser compared to other data sources for institutional trading. We also document two simple facts: 1) institutional trade sizes decline dramatically over time, rendering trade size-based inferences of institutional trades problematic; 2) we estimate that Abel Noser data cover 12% of CRSP volume over our sample period and 15% for 1999–2005, significantly higher than the estimate in Puckett and Yan (2011) for 1999–2005: 8%, a widely quoted number in the literature. This background should prove useful for researchers seeking to address a number of as yet unexplored issues, especially in corporate finance and accounting research.