IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/corfin/v91y2025ics092911992500001x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do “say-on-pay” votes affect M&A decisions?

Author

Listed:
  • Dutta, Shantanu
  • Officer, Micah S.
  • Wang, Ruixiang
  • Zhu, Pengcheng

Abstract

This paper demonstrates that firms receiving above-industry-average support in their “say-on-pay” (SoP) votes engage in more M&A transactions in the subsequent year. Our empirical findings suggest that high levels of SoP voting support may boost managerial confidence, thereby stimulating increased pursuit of acquisitions. Moreover, we observe that managers garnering higher SoP vote support are more likely to secure shareholders' backing in M&A votes, receive higher compensation in successful deals, and face a reduced likelihood of forced turnover following unsuccessful deals. Additionally, we find that both short-term and long-term M&A performance significantly improves in deals announced by managers receiving higher SoP voting support. These findings contribute to our understanding of the relation between shareholder support for CEOs and firm investment.

Suggested Citation

  • Dutta, Shantanu & Officer, Micah S. & Wang, Ruixiang & Zhu, Pengcheng, 2025. "Do “say-on-pay” votes affect M&A decisions?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:corfin:v:91:y:2025:i:c:s092911992500001x
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2025.102733
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092911992500001X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2025.102733?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Say on pay; Mergers and acquisitions; Managerial confidence; corporate governance;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G34 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Mergers; Acquisitions; Restructuring; Corporate Governance
    • G38 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Government Policy and Regulation

    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:eee:corfin:v:91:y:2025:i:c:s092911992500001x. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jcorpfin .

    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.