We investigate the causes and consequences of 737 privately negotiated share repurchases in the years 1984–2001. In contrast to the negative announcement returns and positive repurchase premiums reported by past research, we find positive announcement returns and premiums that are not significantly different from zero. Only when we investigate the 60 greenmail events separately do we find results similar to past research. However, for this subsample, we find long-horizon excess returns that are comparable to the average 18% repurchase premium, challenging the widely accepted opinion that managers overpay in greenmail repurchases. Moreover, we find that our understanding of the event improves when we split the non-greenmail repurchases according to the price paid. Repurchases at a premium can be modeled as signals, while other repurchases are mere wealth transfers between the corporation and the selling stockholders, the extent of which is determined by the relative bargaining power of the seller and the repurchasing firm.

We investigate the relation between the CEO Pay Slice (CPS)—the fraction of the aggregate compensation of the top-five executive team captured by the Chief Executive Officer—and the value, performance, and behavior of public firms. The CPS could reflect the relative importance of the CEO as well as the extent to which the CEO is able to extracts rents. We find that, controlling for all standard controls, CPS is negatively associated with firm value as measured by industry-adjusted Tobin's q. CPS also has a rich set of relations with firms' behavior and performance. In particular, CPS is correlated with lower (industry-adjusted) accounting profitability, lower stock returns accompanying acquisitions announced by the firm and higher likelihood of a negative stock return accompanying such announcements, higher odds of the CEO receiving a lucky option grant at the lowest price of the month, lower performance sensitivity of CEO turnover, and lower stock market returns accompanying the filing of proxy statements for periods when CPS increases. Taken together, our results are consistent with the hypothesis that higher CPS is associated with agency problems and indicate that CPS can provide a useful tool for studying the performance and behavior of firms.