The issue of CEO age and gender vs. concurrent performance is extensively examined, but the association with subsequent performance has limited treatment in the financial literature, and with conflicting findings. In the current study, we examine the association between CEO age and gender, and subsequent company market performance using a more recent set of observations and the standard four-factor model to estimate future cumulative abnormal shareholder returns. We find that subsequent abnormal shareholder returns are marginally significantly higher for female CEOs than for their male counterparts, but no material pattern is observed between CEO age and subsequent abnormal shareholder return performance.

One of the most significant innovations in the world of finance has been the creation and evolvement of cryptocurrencies. These digital means of exchange have been the focus of extensive news coverage, especially the Bitcoin, with a primary focus on the tremendous potential return and the high level of accompanying risk. In this chapter, we examine the risk-return pattern for an array of cryptocurrencies, contrasting the pattern with those of conventional currency and equity investments. We find the measures of cryptocurrency returns and risk to be a very high multiple of those of conventional investments, and the pattern is determined to be robust relative to the time frame. Consequently, cryptocurrencies are determined to provide an alternative to investors that involves tremendously high risk and return.

The failure of the investment community in 2007 to foresee the systematic collapse of the credit default swap market significantly increased the complexity of security analysis and damaged the reputation of the security analyst community in general. submit that in response to the credit crisis, security analysts may have engaged in a de nova form of mimicking by increasing emphasis on general market factors and reducing emphasis on idiosyncratic factors in their valuations, driven by behavioral motives to achieve increased cost efficiency and avoid higher penalties for unfavorable outlier valuations. The result would be increased correlation among security valuations and therefore returns, and diminished benefits of diversification. We test this hypothesis by examining the patterns of security and portfolio returns surrounding the onset of the credit crisis in early 2007 and observe a significant postcrisis increase in the proportion of security and portfolio returns explained by market factors. The findings support the hypothesized shift in emphasis in security analyst valuation techniques, and provide results consistent with the hypothesized behavioral explanations.

Investor confidence regarding the reliability of financial statements is absolutely critical for publicly traded companies. The bankruptcy of Enron has brought to the forefront the issue of auditor independence and financial statement reliability. As a response to the criticism that the growth in consulting services by CPA firms was leading to a conflict of interest and significantly hindering auditor independence, the SEC approved new auditor independence regulations that required publicly traded firms to disclose the level of fees that were paid to their external auditor for non-audit services. This paper investigates the impact that the Enron collapse has had on investor perceptions about auditor independence and financial statement reliability. Using data from proxy statements concerning non-audit fees paid to external auditors, we find evidence that auditor independence and therefore financial statement reliability are compromised by the provision of these non-audit services. The results indicate that in the wake of the Enron revelations, investors perceive financial statements as being less reliable and thus require an additional risk premium, which translates into lower stock prices and a loss of firm value. We also find that there is negative relationship between the extent to which firms use non-audit services and the negative abnormal returns they suffered during the Enron collapse.

In this study, we utilize a unique quarterly dataset of non-GAAP earnings to re-examine the “informational” role of non-GAAP earnings from the perspective of value relevance and earnings predictability in the post-Reg G period. We find that non-GAAP earnings are more value relevant and can better predict future operating earnings of a firm compared to equivalent GAAP earnings. Additionally, we also find empirical evidence suggesting that the difference in the value relevance and earnings predictability between non-GAAP and equivalent GAAP earnings can vary across but cannot be completely mitigated by firm-level characteristics, such as the market value of equity, accruals quality, analyst coverage, and managerial ability of a firm. Moreover, our supplementary analysis reveals that the superior value relevance and predictive power of non-GAAP earnings persist even after the SEC’s release of the Compliance and Disclosure Interpretations (C&DI) in 2010. Overall, our empirical evidence suggests a superior “informational” role of non-GAAP earnings to equivalent GAAP earnings in terms of valuation and predictability on future operating performance in the post-Reg G period.