From Rivals to Allies? CEO Connections in an Era of Common Ownership
Dennis Hutschenreiter, Qianshuo Liu
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 7,
2025
Abstract
Institutional common ownership of firm pairs in the same industry increases the likelihood of a preexisting social connection among their CEOs. We establish this relationship using a quasi-natural experiment that exploits institutional mergers combined with firms’ hiring events and detailed information on CEO biographies. In addition, for peer firms, gaining a CEO connection from a hiring firm’s CEO appointment correlates with higher returns on assets, stock market returns, and decreasing product similarity between companies. We find evidence consistent with common owners allocating CEO connections to shape managerial decisionmaking and increase portfolio firms’ performance.
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14.05.2025 • 16/2025
Private ownership boosts hospital performance
New research by the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH) and ESMT Berlin shows that private equity (PE) acquisitions lead to substantial operational efficiency gains in hospitals, challenging common public concerns. The study reveals that hospitals acquired by PE firms significantly reduce costs and administrative staff without increasing closure rates or harming patient care.
Merih Sevilir
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From Shares to Machines: How Common Ownership Drives Automation
Joseph Emmens, Dennis Hutschenreiter, Stefano Manfredonia, Felix Noth, Tommaso Santini
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 23,
2024
Abstract
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Trading away Incentives
Stefano Colonnello, Giuliano Curatola, Shuo Xia
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 23,
2022
Abstract
Equity pay has been the primary component of managerial compensation packages at US public firms since the early 1990s. Using a comprehensive sample of top executives from 1992-2020, we estimate to what extent they trade firm equity held in their portfolios to neutralize increments in ownership due to annual equity pay. Executives accommodate ownership increases linked to options awards. Conversely, increases in stock holdings linked to option exercises and restricted stock grants are largely neutralized through comparable sales of unrestricted shares. Variation in stock trading responses across executives hardly appears to respond to diversification motives. From a theoretical standpoint, these results challenge (i) the common, generally implicit assumption that managers cannot undo their incentive packages, (ii) the standard modeling practice of treating different equity pay items homogeneously, and (iii) the often taken for granted crucial role of diversification motives in managers’ portfolio choices.
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The Effect of Foreign Institutional Ownership on Corporate Tax Avoidance: International Evidence
Iftekhar Hasan, Incheol Kim, Haimeng Teng, Qiang Wu
Journal of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation,
March
2022
Abstract
We find that foreign institutional investors (FIIs) reduce their investee firms’ tax avoidance. We provide evidence that the effect is driven by the institutional distance between FIIs’ home countries/regions and host countries/regions. Specifically, we find that the effect is driven by the influence of FIIs from countries/regions with high-quality institutions (i.e., common law, high government effectiveness, and high regulatory quality) on investee firms located in countries/regions with low-quality institutions. Furthermore, we show that the effect is concentrated on FIIs with little experience in the investee countries/regions or FIIs with stronger monitoring incentives. Finally, we find that FIIs are more likely to vote against management if the firm has a higher level of tax avoidance.
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The Impact of Political Uncertainty on Institutional Ownership
Bill Francis, Iftekhar Hasan, Yun Zhu
Journal of Financial Stability,
December
2021
Abstract
This paper provides original evidence from institutional investors that political uncertainty greatly affects investment behavior. Using institutional holdings of common stock, we find that institutions significantly reduce their holdings by 0.8–2.3% points during presidential election years. Such effect holds for gubernatorial elections with cross-state-border difference-in-difference analysis and for tests using a political uncertainty index. The effect is the opposite for American Depository Receipts (ADRs). In addition, we find that institutions benefit financially from the observed strategy, and such strategy is in line with predicted outcomes of presidential election polls.
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