An examination of how executive remuneration and firm performance are influenced by Chair-CEO diversity attributes

Advancing prior research, this study investigates the effect of Chair-CEO diversity on the relationship between executive remuneration and firm performance. Employing a unique sample of 262 UK listed firms from 2009 to 2020, our findings are five-fold. First, our findings suggest that Chair-CEO diversity is negatively associated with executive remuneration levels. Second, we document a positive relationship between Chair-CEO diversity attributes and firm performance. Third, we observe that an increase in executive remuneration appears to improve firm performance. Fourth, we show that the relationship between pay, and performance is moderated/explained largely by Chair-CEO diversity attributes. Finally, we show that the predicted relationships vary across firms which have female as Chair and where female is the CEO. Our findings imply that decisions about board diversity are driven by more than just moral principles; they are also influenced by the costs and benefits that diversity might bring to the firm. Our evidence offers empirical support for upper echelons, homophily and resource dependence theories and have significant regulatory impact

Carbon performance, financial performance and market value: The moderating effect of pay incentives

We investigate the interrelationships among carbon performance, CEO Pay, executive compensation, financial performance and market value. Using data relating to non-financial firms from UK FTSE 350 from 2009 to 2018, our findings are fourfold. First, our results suggest that actual carbon performance is negatively associated with financial performance and market value of firms. Second, we document that self-reported carbon performance has no effect on financial performance. By contrast, we observe that self-reported carbon reduction initiatives performance has positive impact on market value. Third, our results suggest that CEO Pay, and executive compensation have positive moderating effect on the association between self-reported carbon performance and financial performance. In addition, we show that self-reported carbon performance–market value nexus is positively moderated by CEO Pay and executive compensation. Fourth, we observe that CEO Pay, and executive compensation have no moderating impact on actual carbon performance–market value nexus. Our findings demonstrate that while firms appear to employ compensation incentives to symbolically enhance their self-reported carbon performance, this does not result in actual carbon emission reduction. Our findings have key implications for policymakers

The impact of earnings per share targets in executive remuneration contracts on company accounting choices

This study concerns itself with executive share option plans that have earnings per share targets and examines whether the existence of such vesting criteria results in opportunistic behaviour by managers or represents efficient contracting. Accounting choices by management are studied to see whether earnings per share targets in various executive remuneration components are associated with (1) the disclosure of alternative earnings per share, (2) earnings management defined as abnormal working capital accruals and (3) earnings management defined as meeting or beating analysts' forecasts. To begin with, the current study tests for an association between the disclosure of alternative earnings per share figures and earnings per share performance criteria in executive share options. Following Healy (1985) it is argued that situations might exist where executives are aware they will not meet the target or will overshoot the target giving rise to incentives to manage earnings downwards. There are also situations where executives expect to miss the target but have incentives (and scope) to manage earnings upwards. The study then proceeds to measure earnings management using a modified Jones (1991) model. A proxy for target growth in earnings per share is developed. The third and final section of the current study considers meeting or beating analysts' forecasts as the earnings management metric. Prior research provides evidence that meeting or beating analysts' forecasts is rewarded by the stock market and as the payout from executive share options is linked to share price, executives have incentives to meet or beat analysts' forecasts.Regression analysis, in the form of either logit or ordinary least squares is employed in all three sections of this study. The results suggest that earnings management is associated with earnings per share vesting targets in executive share option plans. Moreover, the findings as a whole suggest that the introduction of earnings per share targets as a vesting criterion in executive share options resulted in opportunistic behaviour by management.This thesis adopts an agency theory framework and contributes to the literature on corporate governance and executive remuneration by identifying a specific contractual setting where management is especially sensitive to reported earnings numbers. This particular setting is novel. Additionally, the research design facilitated the testing of whether or not executive share options with an earnings per share growth target result in opportunistic behaviour on the part of managers or represent efficient contracting.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Cytomegaloviral determinants of CD8+ T cell programming and RhCMV/SIV vaccine efficacy

Simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) insert-expressing, 68–1 Rhesus Cytomegalovirus (RhCMV/SIV) vectors elicit major histocompatibility complex (MHC)-E- and -II-restricted, SIV-specific CD8(+) T cell responses, but the basis of these unconventional responses and their contribution to demonstrated vaccine efficacy against SIV challenge in the rhesus monkeys (RMs) has not been characterized. We show that these unconventional responses resulted from a chance genetic rearrangement in 68–1 RhCMV that abrogated the function of eight distinct immunomodulatory gene products encoded in two RhCMV genomic regions (Rh157.5/Rh157.4 and Rh158–161), revealing three patterns of unconventional response inhibition. Differential repair of these genes with either RhCMV-derived or orthologous human CMV (HCMV)-derived sequences (UL128/UL130; UL146/UL147) leads to either of two distinct CD8(+) T cell response types – MHC-Ia-restricted-only, or a mix of MHC-II- and MHC-Ia-restricted CD8(+) T cells. Response magnitude and functional differentiation are similar to RhCMV 68–1, but neither alternative response type mediated protection against SIV challenge. These findings implicate MHC-E-restricted CD8(+) T cell responses as mediators of anti-SIV efficacy and indicate that translation of RhCMV/SIV vector efficacy to humans will likely require deletion of all genes that inhibit these responses from the HCMV/HIV vector

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Functional and quality of life outcomes of localised prostate cancer treatments (prostate testing for cancer and treatment [ProtecT] study)

Objective To investigate the functional and quality of life (QoL) outcomes of treatments for localised prostate cancer and inform treatment decision-making. Patients and Methods Men aged 50–69 years diagnosed with localised prostate cancer by prostate-specific antigen testing and biopsies at nine UK centres in the Prostate Testing for Cancer and Treatment (ProtecT) trial were randomised to, or chose one of, three treatments. Of 2565 participants, 1135 men received active monitoring (AM), 750 a radical prostatectomy (RP), 603 external-beam radiotherapy (EBRT) with concurrent androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) and 77 low-dose-rate brachytherapy (BT, not a randomised treatment). Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) completed annually for 6 years were analysed by initial treatment and censored for subsequent treatments. Mixed effects models were adjusted for baseline characteristics using propensity scores. Results Treatment-received analyses revealed different impacts of treatments over 6 years. Men remaining on AM experienced gradual declines in sexual and urinary function with age (e.g., increases in erectile dysfunction from 35% of men at baseline to 53% at 6 years and nocturia similarly from 20% to 38%). Radical treatment impacts were immediate and continued over 6 years. After RP, 95% of men reported erectile dysfunction persisting for 85% at 6 years, and after EBRT this was reported by 69% and 74%, respectively (P < 0.001 compared with AM). After RP, 36% of men reported urinary leakage requiring at least 1 pad/day, persisting for 20% at 6 years, compared with no change in men receiving EBRT or AM (P < 0.001). Worse bowel function and bother (e.g., bloody stools 6% at 6 years and faecal incontinence 10%) was experienced by men after EBRT than after RP or AM (P < 0.001) with lesser effects after BT. No treatment affected mental or physical QoL. Conclusion Treatment decision-making for localised prostate cancer can be informed by these 6-year functional and QoL outcomes

The impact of executive pay on the disclosure of alternative earnings per share figures

AbstractThis paper investigates the motives for disclosing an alternative earnings per share (EPS) figure. In particular, we extend prior findings for the UK (Choi, Lin, Walker & Young, 2007) by highlighting the role of managerial contracting in the alternative EPS disclosure choice. We examine a specific contractual setting where management is especially sensitive to reported earnings numbers, i.e., when EPS performance targets exist in the managerial remuneration package. Our analysis suggests that the choice to disclose an alternative EPS figure is positively related to firms where the vesting of executive share options (ESOs) is contingent on the achievement of growth in EPS. Our results remain significant after testing for selection bias, direction of causality and after matching firms on variables prior literature identifies as influential in the choice of an EPS target as a performance criterion in executive remuneration

Carbon performance, financial performance and market value: The moderating effect of pay incentives

We investigate the interrelationships among carbon performance, CEO Pay, executive compensation, financial performance and market value. Using data relating to non-financial firms from UK FTSE 350 from 2009 to 2018, our findings are fourfold. First, our results suggest that actual carbon performance is negatively associated with financial performance and market value of firms. Second, we document that self-reported carbon performance has no effect on financial performance. By contrast, we observe that self-reported carbon reduction initiatives performance has positive impact on market value. Third, our results suggest that CEO Pay, and executive  compensation have positive moderating effect on the association between self-reported carbon performance and financial performance. In addition, we show that self-reported  carbon performance–market value nexus is positively moderated by CEO Pay and executive compensation. Fourth, we observe that CEO Pay, and executive compensation have no moderating impact on actual carbon performance–market value nexus. Our findings demonstrate that while firms appear to employ compensation incentives to symbolically enhance their self-reported carbon performance, this does not result in actual carbon emission reduction. Our findings have key implications  for policymakers.</p