Hiring Cheerleaders: Board Appointments of "Independent" Directors

Lauren Cohen (), Andrea Frazzini () and Christopher J. Malloy ()
Additional contact information
Lauren Cohen: Harvard Business School, Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts 02163
Christopher J. Malloy: Harvard Business School, Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts 02163

Management Science, 2012, vol. 58, issue 6, 1039-1058

Abstract: We provide evidence that firms appoint independent directors who are overly sympathetic to management, while still technically independent according to regulatory definitions. We explore a subset of independent directors for whom we have detailed, microlevel data on their views regarding the firm prior to being appointed to the board: sell-side analysts who are subsequently appointed to the boards of companies they previously covered. We find that boards appoint overly optimistic analysts who are also poor relative performers. The magnitude of the optimistic bias is large: 82.0% of appointed recommendations are strong buy/buy recommendations, compared with 56.9% for all other analyst recommendations. We also show that appointed analysts' optimism is stronger at precisely those times when firms' benefits are larger. Last, we find that appointing firms are more likely to have management on the board nominating committee, appear to be poorly governed, and increase earnings management and chief executive officer compensation following these board appointments. This paper was accepted by Brad Barber, finance.

Keywords: independent directors; appointments; analysts; board members (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (63)

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.1110.1483 (application/pdf)

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Working Paper: Hiring Cheerleaders: Board Appointments of "Independent" Directors (2008)
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