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We examine director skills and report that the main dimension along which boards vary is in the diversity of skills of their directors. We find that firm performance increases when director skill sets exhibit more commonality.

In 2009, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reformed shareholder voting by eliminating uninstructed broker voting in director elections. We use this reform as a quasi-natural experiment to assess the value of shareholder empowerment. Using different control groups and various cross-sectional tests, we find that the reform did not increase average equity values.

We examine how the adoptions of corporate governance codes by Member States of the European Union (EU) have affected IPO underpricing on Member State-regulated market. We find that, on average, IPO underpricing declined on Member State-regulated markets after Member States adopted corporate governance codes containing SOX-like provisions.

We examine share repurchases and report that we find that firms that use accelerated share repurchases (ASRs) have lower market-to-book ratios, less cash, but greater managerial entrenchment. Prior to repurchase, ASR firms are subject to significantly more takeover rumors than OMR firms are, and this, along with entrenchment and undervaluation, affects the choice to use ASRs.

We find that firm leverage is positively related to the wages of employees. We conclude that the human capital costs of bankruptcy are an important disadvantage of debt.

Using actual share repurchase data from Australia, we find that firms with the undervaluation motive experience a more positive stock price reaction when they report their repurchases to the market. Overall, our results suggest that the undervaluation motive is a stronger signal than other repurchase motives, and contrary to the predictions of the standard signaling theories, management statements carry some value for the market.

We investigate the wealth effects associated with the SEC’s rule to facilitate director nominations by shareholders. Our results are not in line with shareholder empowerment creating value.

We examine the wealth effects of the SEC proxy access rule to facilitate director nominations by shareholders. We find more negative announcement effects for firms with high probabilities of being targeted by shareholders.

I examine intraday stock returns in the Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE) around nontrading periods – weekends and holidays – by utilizing the exchange’s structure of two trading sessions. I find that returns are generally more positive in the last session on Fridays and more negative in the first session on Mondays.