Essays in corporate governance

Waquar Ahmad

doi:10.17918/etd-7518

This dissertation titled "Essays in Corporate Governance" contains two essays in matters relating to corporations and their governance practices. The titles and the abstracts of the two papers are presented below. Does it pay to play? Political donations around mergers and acquisitions: This study focuses on corporate political donations around mergers and acquisitions of U.S. firms. I track the political contributions made by firms involved in large U.S. mergers from 2000 to 2010 by focusing on four different ways that corporations contribute to political parties: political action committee (PAC) donations, PAC to PAC donations, soft money and 527 committees' donations, and individual donations. Consistent with politicians' rent-seeking behavior, I document evidence that participants in mergers and acquisitions alter their donations around these deals in attempts to influence the deal outcome and appear to do so particularly around deals where donations may be more effective. Overall, I find that large shifts in donations around mergers and acquisitions increase the likelihood of deal completion. After controlling for firm and merger characteristics, the firms involved in mergers make more political contributions after a deal is announced compared to periods before the announcement and after a deal is finalized. This behavior is more pronounced when the deal continues for an extended period of time, which is consistent with the notion that these deals may face more regulatory hurdles and donations may likely impact the merger outcome. Furthermore, I document higher bidder and target abnormal donations after a merger announcement when the market reaction is negative. Finally, donation intensity increases when the merger would cause the industry concentrations ratios to increase above normal. These results collectively suggest that firms aggressively manage political donations around merger and acquisition activity, potentially indicating agency conflicts driving these donations. Director Alpha: An objective measure of director contribution: The appointment of high value directors is associated with immediate positive market reaction, and the presence of high value directors in the board enhances long-run firm value. We identify the contribution of directors by alpha, or the abnormal risk-adjusted stock returns that are generated in other firms on whose boards they sit. We find that investors react positively when high alpha directors are appointed to high alpha boards. CEOs and individuals with MBA or CPA designations are more likely to be high value directors. We find that high alpha directors contribute significantly to firm value. For the typical firm, our parameter estimates imply that replacing a negative alpha director with a positive one is associated with a 3.3% improvement in firm value.

Essays in corporate governance

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Essays in corporate governance

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