Date: 28 February 2025, Friday
Time: 13.30 – 14.30
“Beyond ESG: Executive Pay Metrics and Shareholder Support”
by
Mariassunta Giannetti
Stockholm School of Economics
This is an online seminar. To request event details please send a message to department.
Abstract:
We document that executive compensation contracts feature a multitude of market, earnings, operating, and ESG metrics and that the increase in ESG metrics has been accompanied by a higher propensity to use operating metrics. These developments are particularly pronounced in companies with volatile returns, recently appointed CEOs, and new active blockholders, such as activist hedge funds and private equity investors. Compensation metrics do not appear to have a large effect on actual payouts to executives and on the sensitivity of pay to market, earnings, and ESG performance, but rather aim to create consensus among shareholders on the proposed pay and the overall corporate strategy.
Bio :
Mariassunta Giannetti is the Katarina Martinson Professor of Finance at the Stockholm School of Economics, a CEPR research fellow, and a research member and fellow of the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI). Professor Giannetti has broad research interests in corporate finance and financial intermediation. Her contributions span production networks and trade credit, intermediaries’ organizational structures and fire sales, banking and monetary policy, financial integration, and corporate governance and sustainability. She has published numerous highly cited papers in leading journals in Finance, Economics, and Management, including the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, the Review of Financial Studies, and Management Science. Her accomplishments have earned her international recognitions and awards, including an ECGI fellowship for scientific excellence in corporate governance research, the Assar Lindbeck Medal, the NYU Stern/ Imperial/ Fordham Rising Star in Finance award, the Sun Yefang Financial Innovation Award, the Review of Finance Pagano-Zechner Prize, the ECGI Standard Life Investments Finance Prize, the Journal of Financial Intermediation best paper award, the China International Conference in Finance Best Paper Award, and the ECB Lamfalussy Research Fellowship. Professor Giannetti has been serving as associate editor of several journals, including the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, the Review of Financial Studies, the Review of Finance, and the Economic Journal, and as a director of the European Finance Association, the Financial Intermediation Research Society, and the Financial Management Association. She was also an advisory board member of the Academic Female Finance Committee (AFFECT) of the American Finance Association and is a frequent visitor and speaker at central banks worldwide. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles, and earned her B.A. and M.Sc. from Bocconi University (Italy).