IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/econom/v73y2006i290p321-339.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Impact of Merger Activity on Executive Pay in the United Kingdom

Author

Listed:
  • SOURAFEL GIRMA
  • STEVE THOMPSON
  • PETER W. WRIGHT

Abstract

We examine the impact of mergers and acquisitions on the remuneration of CEOs in the UK from 1981 to 1996. We find that CEO pay is not strongly related to company performance. In contrast, increases in firm size do have a significant impact. There is also evidence that acquisitions offer CEOs the scope to influence their pay positively. We also note however that CEOs engaging in ‘wealth‐reducing’ acquisitions experience significantly lower remuneration than their counterparts whose deals meet with market approval. This result suggests that shareholder–principals have at least some success in penalizing managers for unwarranted, empire‐building, mergers.

Suggested Citation

  • Sourafel Girma & Steve Thompson & Peter W. Wright, 2006. "The Impact of Merger Activity on Executive Pay in the United Kingdom," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 73(290), pages 321-339, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:econom:v:73:y:2006:i:290:p:321-339
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1648-0335.2006.00513.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1648-0335.2006.00513.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1648-0335.2006.00513.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bertrand, M. & Mullainathan, S., 1998. "Executive Compensation and Incentives: the Impact of Takeover Legislation," Papers 202, Princeton, Woodrow Wilson School - Public and International Affairs.
    2. repec:fth:prinin:404 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. A Cosh & P Guest, 2001. "The Long-Run Performance of Hostile Takeovers: UK Evidence," Working Papers wp215, Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge.
    4. Marianne Bertrand & Sendhil Mullainathan, 1998. "Executive Compensation and Incentives: The Impact of Takeover Legislation," Working Papers 783, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kräkel, Matthias & Müller, Daniel, 2015. "Merger efficiency and managerial incentives," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 51-63.
    2. Ozkan, Neslihan, 2012. "Do CEOs gain more in foreign acquisitions than domestic acquisitions?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 1122-1138.
    3. Hristos Doucouliagos & Janto Haman & T.D. Stanley, 2012. "Pay for Performance and Corporate Governance Reform," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(3), pages 670-703, July.
    4. Kräkel, Matthias & Müller, Daniel, 2014. "Merger Performance and Managerial Incentives," Bonn Econ Discussion Papers 02/2014, University of Bonn, Bonn Graduate School of Economics (BGSE).
    5. Margarita Carvalho & João Cerejeira, 2019. "Mergers and Acquisitions and wage effects in the Portuguese banking sector," NIPE Working Papers 07/2019, NIPE - Universidade do Minho.
    6. Birhanu, Addis Gedefaw & Geiler, Philipp & Renneboog, Luc & Zhao, Yang, 2021. "Acquisition experience and director remuneration," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    7. Chandra S. Mishra, 2020. "Frequent acquirers and management compensation," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(5), pages 661-694, July.
    8. Swarnodeep Homroy, 2014. "Pay increase may not be a strong incentive for undertaking acquisitions," Working Papers 66910750, Lancaster University Management School, Economics Department.
    9. Jongmoo Jay Choi & Omer F. Genc & Ming Ju, 2020. "Is an M&A self‐dealing? Evidence on international and domestic acquisitions and CEO compensation," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(9-10), pages 1290-1315, October.
    10. Paul M. Guest, 2009. "The Impact of Mergers and Acquisitions on Executive Pay in the United Kingdom," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 76(301), pages 149-175, February.
    11. Amewu, Godfred & Alagidede, Paul, 2019. "Mergers and executive compensation changes: Evidence from African markets," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 397-419.
    12. Khalil Jebran & Shihua Chen & Wanying Cai, 2022. "Excess of everything is bad: CEO greed and corporate policies," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 59(4), pages 1577-1607, November.
    13. Papa, Gianluca & Speciale, Biagio, 2011. "Financial leverage and managerial compensation: Evidence from the UK," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 36-46, March.
    14. Birhanu, Addis & Geiler, Philipp & Renneboog, Luc & Zhao, Yang, 2021. "Acquisition experience and director remuneration," Other publications TiSEM 6c1d41ae-5e2a-4868-b1af-1, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    15. Kräkel, Matthias & Müller, Daniel, 2013. "Bad Mergers Revisited: An Incentive Perspective," VfS Annual Conference 2013 (Duesseldorf): Competition Policy and Regulation in a Global Economic Order 79914, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    16. Agyei-Boapeah, Henry & Ntim, Collins G. & Fosu, Samuel, 2019. "Governance structures and the compensation of powerful corporate leaders in financial firms during M&As," Journal of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation, Elsevier, vol. 37(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez & Stefanie Stantcheva, 2014. "Optimal Taxation of Top Labor Incomes: A Tale of Three Elasticities," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 6(1), pages 230-271, February.
    2. Carola Frydman & Dirk Jenter, 2010. "CEO Compensation," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 2(1), pages 75-102, December.
    3. Becht, Marco & Bolton, Patrick & Roell, Ailsa, 2003. "Corporate governance and control," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 1, pages 1-109, Elsevier.
    4. Bushman, Robert M. & Smith, Abbie J., 2001. "Financial accounting information and corporate governance," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1-3), pages 237-333, December.
    5. Jenter, Dirk, 2004. "Executive Compensation, Incentives, and Risk," Working papers 4466-02, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.
    6. Goergen, Marc & Renneboog, Luc, 2008. "Contractual corporate governance," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 166-182, June.
    7. Wright, Peter & Thompson, Steve & Girma, Sourafel, 2002. "Merger Activity and Executive Pay," CEPR Discussion Papers 3255, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Anderson, Ronald C. & Bizjak, John M., 2003. "An empirical examination of the role of the CEO and the compensation committee in structuring executive pay," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 27(7), pages 1323-1348, July.
    9. Chilosi, Alberto & Damiani, Mirella, 2007. "Stakeholders vs. shareholders in corporate governance," MPRA Paper 2334, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Teodora Paligorova, 2007. "Corporate Governance and Executive Pay: Evidence from a Recent Reform," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp331, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    11. Aggarwal, Rajesh K. & Samwick, Andrew A., 2006. "Empire-builders and shirkers: Investment, firm performance, and managerial incentives," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 489-515, June.
    12. Marianne Bertrand & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2000. "Do CEOs Set Their Own Pay? The Ones Without Principals Do," NBER Working Papers 7604, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Oren Bar-Gill & Michal Barzuza & Lucian Bebchuk, 2006. "The Market for Corporate Law," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 162(1), pages 134-160, March.
    14. Renneboog, Luc & Vansteenkiste, Cara, 2019. "Failure and success in mergers and acquisitions," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 650-699.
    15. Simon Deakin, 2005. "The Coming Transformation of Shareholder Value," Corporate Governance: An International Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 13(1), pages 11-18, January.
    16. Chirinko, Robert S. & Elston, Julie Ann, 2006. "Finance, control and profitability: the influence of German banks," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 69-88, January.
    17. Marianne Bertrand & Sendhil Mullainathan, 1999. "Is There a Discretion in Wage Setting? A Test Using Takeover Legislation," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 30(3), pages 535-554, Autumn.
    18. Ronan G. Powell, 2004. "Takeover Prediction Models and Portfolio Strategies: A Multinomial Approach," Multinational Finance Journal, Multinational Finance Journal, vol. 8(1-2), pages 35-72, March-Jun.
    19. John Armour & Simon Deakin & Suzanne J. Konzelmann, 2003. "Shareholder Primacy and the Trajectory of UK Corporate Governance," Working Papers wp266, Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge.
    20. Martynova, Marina & Renneboog, Luc, 2008. "A century of corporate takeovers: What have we learned and where do we stand?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(10), pages 2148-2177, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:econom:v:73:y:2006:i:290:p:321-339. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.