 Do activist hedge funds target female CEOs? The role of CEO gender in hedge fund activismBill B. Francis, Iftekhar Hasan, Shen, Yinjie (Victor) and Qiang Wu Journal of Financial Economics, 2021, vol. 141, issue 1, 372-393 Abstract: Using a comprehensive US hedge fund activism dataset from 2003 to 2018, we find that activist hedge funds are about 52% more likely to target firms with female CEOs compared to firms with male CEOs. We find that firm fundamentals, the existence of a “glass cliff,” gender discrimination bias, and hedge fund activists’ inherent characteristics do not explain the observed gender effect. We also find that the transformational leadership style of female CEOs is a plausible explanation for this gender effect: instead of being self-defensive, female CEOs are more likely to communicate and cooperate with hedge fund activists to achieve intervention goals. Finally, we find that female-led targets experience greater increases in market and operational performance subsequent to hedge fund targeting. Keywords: Hedge fund activism; Female CEOs; Transformational leadership style; Collaborative communication; Cooperation (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jfinec:v:141:y:2021:i:1:p:372-393 DOI: 10.1016/j.jfineco.2020.07.019 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Financial Economics is currently edited by G. William Schwert More articles in Journal of Financial Economics from Elsevier |
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