Governance, Conference Calls and CEO Compensation

Abstract

We study the relations between governance mechanisms (internal and external), conference call voluntary disclosures (incidence and length), and CEO compensation using hand-collected data on conference calls, corporate governance, and compensation. We hypothesize and show that institutions push for more frequent and longer conference calls in order to obtain more information with which to evaluate their investment. While independent directors push to hold conference calls, they may also prefer to have shorter conference calls to avoid potential lawsuits, proprietary costs, and/or loss of reputation that can arise from releasing too much information. Entrenched executives seek to minimize risk (such as employment and/or litigation risk) by limiting the length of conference calls or by avoiding conference calls altogether. In addition, contrary to recently proposed hypotheses, we find that executives do not receive additional compensation for bearing the risks of holding voluntary conference calls.

Keywords: Voluntary disclosure, Conference calls, Governance, Compensation, Entrenchment, Institutions, REITs

JEL Classification: D80, D82, G10, G30, G32, G34