We investigate whether qualified and experienced directors are willing to join firms following the revelation of financial fraud. Specifically, we focus on directors with prior board experience and accounting and legal experts. We find that, notwithstanding the tarnished reputation of fraudulent firms and a higher workload, qualified and experienced directors join the boards of such firms. Subsequent to joining fraudulent firms, directors are rewarded with additional future board seats and benefit from higher compensation. We rule out alternative explanations and verify the robustness of the results by performing a variety of tests, including propensity score matching and difference-in-differences analysis. JEL Classifications: G30; G34.

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This study replicates and extends the results of Field and Mkrtchyan, who find that independent directors' prior acquisition experience improves succeeding acquisition performance. First, using both the original and an extended sample period, we confirm their findings. Second, we extend their study by considering the effect of prior acquisition experience gained by the CEO as an executive or independent director. Similar to the effect documented for independent directors, we find that CEOs' acquisition experience is positively associated with subsequent acquisition performance. Consistent with CEO learning, we document a greater effect on subsequent takeover performance when acquisition experience is negative.

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Conventional approaches to improving the representation of women on the boards of major companies typically focus on increasing the number of women appointed to these positions. We show that this strategy alone does not improve gender equity. Instead of relying on aggregate statistics (“headcounts”) to evaluate women’s inclusion, we use network analysis to identify and examine two types of influence in corporate board networks: local influence measured by degree centrality and global influence measured by betweenness centrality and k-core centrality. Comparing board membership data from Australia’s largest 200 listed companies in the ASX200 index in 2015 and 2018 respectively, we demonstrate that despite an increase in the number of women holding board seats during this time, their agency in terms of these network measures remains substantively unchanged. We argue that network analysis offers more nuanced approaches to measuring women’s inclusion in organizational networks and will facilitate more successful outcomes for gender diversity and equity.

We examine whether the age of CEOs and independent directors impacts the likelihood of receiving a successful takeover offer. First, we replicate and confirm the results of Jenter and Lewellen and find that retirement age CEOs (age 64-66) are more likely to receive successful takeover offers. Second, we extend their study by investigating the retirement preferences of independent directors. We find that the likelihood of receiving a successful takeover offer increases when a higher proportion of independent directors are at retirement age. This finding suggests that independent directors have similar retirement preferences to CEOs.

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Recent concern has been expressed regarding accounting firms reducing the quality of their assurance services (statutory audit and other assurance services) to gain cross‐selling opportunities. While prior studies have focused on the quality of statutory audits, our study examines the quality of other assurance services, in the form of independent expert opinions provided to target firms in Australian takeovers. Specifically, this setting allows us to observe any dissent or consensus in opinions between the accounting firms and their clients regarding the fairness of a takeover offer price, the quality of the independent expert report (valuation range), and fees charged for their services. Our results are inconsistent with accounting firms providing lower quality independent expert reports. However, non–Big 4 accounting firms charge lower fees for their independent expert reports compared to other providers, consistent with potential incentives to cross‐sell future services.