Empirical Research Suggests that Issuers’ CEO/Chairman Structure is Not Correlated with Company Performance
We conducted an empirical analysis to determine whether issuers that have a separate CEO/chairman structure outperform those that have a combined CEO/chairman. We found that, while there may be legitimate reasons to separate the CEO and chairman positions at certain companies depending on their specific circumstances at any given point in time, from a financial performance perspective the current focus on separating the CEO and chairman positions across public companies appears to be misplaced. In other words, there appears to be little economic evidence to support separating the roles of the CEO and chairman.