Retiring CEOs Hurt Share Prices
Retiring executives routinely fudge the financials to boost their companies' performances--and their own golden years payouts--before heading out the door. That's the conclusion of a study published yesterday by the American Accounting Association. It suggests that lame-duck CEOs are boosting performance-based retirement packages by fudging earnings results in ways that often lead to significant stock price declines shortly after they head out the door that would otherwise not be expected, according to author Paul Kalyta, a Desautels Faculty of Management at º«¹úÂãÎè University business professor. When Kalyta calculated share price performance in the three years after CEOs retired at the 388 companies he studied, the average loss was 0.3%. Among companies whose CEOs received performance-based SERPs, the average decline was 8%. The real kicker: Much of the fudging breaks no laws.
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,October 21, 2009
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