Celebrating Success: Dr Vu Trinh, Dr Teng Li and Professor Savvas Papagiannidis

Congratulations to Dr Vu Trinh, Dr Teng Li and Professor Savvas Papagiannidis who had an article “Former CEOs Chairing the Board: Does it matter to Corporate Social and Environmental Investments accepted for publication in Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting.

Former CEOs who stay on the board as Chairmen (i.e., Chair-Former-CEO or CFCEO) often play a vital role in monitoring and advising the incumbent CEOs. However, their influence on firm performance remains under-investigated. This paper aims to offer new insights into the impact that such a role can have by examining the corporate social and environmental responsibility intensity. To this end, this study examines the effect of CFCEOs on the firm’s social and environmental responsibility intensity of 1,263 non-financial U.S. S&P1500 firms over the period of 2002-2020. We find that firms with the presence of CFCEO exhibit superior social and environmental performance. Such a finding suggests that CFCEOs can encourage a long-term value creation for a broader range of stakeholders by building social capital and public trust. Additional analyses also reveal that the positive association between the CFCEO and firms’ social and environmental performance was more pronounced during the COVID-19 pandemic than the global financial crisis 2007-9.