Passing the Dividend Baton

Event abstract

This seminar will examine how a firms’ dividend policy affects the initial compensation of their new CEOs. We focus on new CEOs to isolate the effect of dividends on compensation and to provide new insights into an aspect largely neglected in compensation research. We show that the dividend payout is positively related to new CEO compensation and that this positive relation remains after addressing potential endogeneity concerns. Further, the positive effect of dividends is stronger for firms with no dividend cuts over the past two, three and four years, firms with relatively high institutional ownership, and those with strong boards, consistent with new CEOs receiving higher pay as compensation for greater dividend pressure.

Speaker biography

Marc Goergen is Professor of Finance at Cardiff Business School (University of Cardiff). His research interests lie in the fields of corporate governance, boards of directors, private equity, initial public offerings, insider trading and dividend policy. He has extensively published in many highly ranked journals such as British Journal of Management, Journal of Corporate Finance, Economic and Industrial Democracy, Journal of International Financial Markets and Institutions and Money. He is also associate editor in a number of prestigious journals; Journal Corporate Finance, British Journal of Management, European Financial Management, Journal of Banking and Finance and the European Journal of Finance.