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The 2008-2009 subprime mortgage crisis in the USA caused bankruptcies and closures of many financial institutions. Yet many CEOs of US financial institutions were awarded huge bonuses and pay packages despite the economic collapse, suggesting that their incomes were not in conjunction with those of the shareholders, indicating a serious agency problem. This issue raises the question as to whether stock option backdating, another example of an agency problem, was as prevalent as slack lending policies among these financial institutions. This paper aims to compare the relative magnitude of executive option backdating in financial and nonfinancial firms.

Using a sample of CEO stock option grants from 1995 to 2006, obtained from ExecuComp, the authors employ an event study around the grant dates of executive options. The authors compare the abnormal price movements between financial and nonfinancial firms.

The abnormal negative stock returns were found before the award dates for both groups of firms. The after-event abnormal returns of both groups of firms, however, show different trends. For nonfinancial firms, there is an immediate turnaround of the abnormal return movement right after the grants; that is, the price increases, indicating the occurrence of significant backdating events. For financial firms, however, there is no significant price rebound after the grant date. In fact, the price continued to decline throughout the after-event period.

The result shows that nonfinancial firms demonstrate significantly more option backdating behavior than financial firms.

The findings suggest that previous findings on prevalent backdating among all public listed firms are only partially correct. This paper shows that backdating behavior found in previous studies is indeed driven by nonfinancial firms. This unexpected finding contradicts the initial prediction of authors that option backdating may be more likely among financial firms.

Based on previous research, the authors recognize that generally the official grant dates of firms must have been set retroactively, as shown by Lie (2005). The findings, however, show that financial firms demonstrate only partial backdating behavior. This study opens a path for future research to further discover why financial firms exhibit less backdating behavior compared with nonfinancial firms, and if option backdating is not an issue for financial firms, why the share prices of these firms decline significantly prior to the grant date.

Recent findings show that CEOs tend to backdate their stock option grants so that a past date on which the stock price was particularly low is picked to be the grant date. Using cases now settled concerning a group of firms that were caught backdating, this paper aims to examine further whether backdating firms have higher levels of operating efficiency and corporate governance, lower levels of bankruptcy risk, more ability to increase shareholder wealth, and lower levels of market price risk. This paper also compares the characteristics of backdating firms during the pre-Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) and post-SOX periods.

This sample of backdater firms comprises those caught backdating who have settled their cases, according to data provided by Risk Metrics Group, a non-profit organization that keeps track of most securities class actions. A matched sample of 28 non-backdating, comparison-group firms was constructed to perform univariate and multivariate comparisons.

This study found that backdating firms on average have a higher price risk than non-backdating firms, and that increasing the percentage of shares owned by the major shareholders reduces the possibility of management conducting backdating activities.

No previous studies have used a sample of real backdating culprits. Previous studies have usually used likely backdating traits to identify a group of suspected backdaters. In contrast, the current study, by using a group of firms whose deliberate backdating behavior had led to lawsuits that have been settled in court, investigated the characteristics of known backdaters.

Provides the conceptual structure and practical framework for analysing the effects which changes in operating cycle variables will have on economic value. Focuses on important issues and techniques in analysing and managing raw materials, work in process, finished goods and accounts receivable. Addresses single and joint effects of changes in the operating cycle on additions to value. Illustrates the amplification effects of improvements in the operating cycle. Contains simplified sample analysis to allow one to focus on conceptual and practical issues rather than complex numbers.

Briefly describes the nature and importance of capital investments and why managers of all functional areas should understand the basics of analysis. Reviews conceptual issues. Develops important perspectives for corporate leaders, managers and analysts. Provides practical guidelines for analysis. Furnishes a useful format for analysis easily adaptable to spreadsheet analysis. Illustrates techniques of analysis using a sample capital project. Interprets the results in a common‐sense manner and in terms of the contribution of the project to shareholder value. Addresses issues at a level appropriate for each professional manager regardless of their area of expertise and functional assignment.

Focuses on the operating cycle. Provides a conceptual and practical understanding of issues and relationships of importance to all managers, such as invested capital, flowing capital, return of and on capital, lost and idle capital, risk‐return‐value relationships, basic cost relationships and economic break‐even. Explains and emphasizes how the operating cycle, and indeed the survival of the firm and creation of value, are critically dependent on the marketing function. Demonstrates why the contribution of each individual to the “team” is vital to creating value. Illustrates the importance of and provides guidelines for applying the concepts in the different functional areas with an example focusing on human resource management.

As US business organizations continue to use more expatriates in international locations, the reasons for high failure rates of these assignments need to be examined. Selection and training may be the key inadequacies. Intercultural anxiety plays an important role in productive expatriate assignments. By determining personnel with lower intercultural anxiety levels, successful assignment completions should increase. Examines attributional complexity, stereotyping, ethnocentrism and acquaintance with host‐country nationals to determine the relationship of these variables to reduced intercultural anxiety. A group considering assignments to Japan, consisting of business and education executives and their families, were surveyed before and after an intensive study visit. Findings indicate that stereotyping and ethnocentrism have a negative association with decreased intercultural anxiety. Attributional complexity and acquaintances have a positive effect on reduced anxiety levels. Suggestions for organizations making expatriate selection decisions include screening potential candidates for these traits. Also provides areas for further research.

The position of women managers in Britain is addressed and the relevant issues for the 1990s are discussed. While it seems relatively easy for women to gain employment at the lower levels of organisations, it is still proving very difficult for them to reach upper middle and senior management positions. However, in view of impending demographic changes and probable European Community directives on equal opportunities from 1992, it is visualised that the next decade will provide an enormous opportunity for working women, particularly those in business and management.

Despite the recession, unemployment and subtle political moves to keep them out of the work‐force, more women are working than ever before. Throughout Europe, however, there is still job segregation based on gender—the arbitrary division between ‘men's jobs’ and ‘women's jobs’, which is often taken for granted. In all EEC countries over 50% of women are employed in the services sector, which includes retail, trade, education, health care and clerical duties. Approximately 20–25% of women workers are employed in the textile and food industries, and large numbers in the chemical and electronics industries. Women's advance into what have been traditionally men's jobs is still very small. In the UK, for instance, the Economic Activity Tables of the 1981 Census—published in 1984—reveal seven occupation orders, in which women were outnumbered by men by more than ten to one: professional and related in science, engineering and technology; managerial; security and protective services; processing, metals and electrical; construction and mining; transport and storage; miscellaneous. The groupings accounted for a mere 19% of the entire female work‐force both in 1971 and 1981. No inroads had been made.

Few issues in recent times have so provoked debate and dissention within the library field as has the concept of fees for user services. The issue has aroused the passions of our profession precisely because its roots and implications extend far beyond the confines of just one service discipline. Its reflection is mirrored in national debates about the proper spheres of the public and private sectors—in matters of information generation and distribution, certainly, but in a host of other social ramifications as well, amounting virtually to a debate about the most basic values which we have long assumed to constitute the very framework of our democratic and humanistic society.