The effect of corporate governance on CEO luck: Evidence from the Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS)

•Lucky CEOs receive stock option grants on days when the stock price is the lowest.•More effective governance reduces the opportunistic timing of option grants.•Certain governance mechanisms are more effective than others.

CEOs are “lucky” when they receive stock option grants on days when the stock price is the lowest in the month of the grant, implying opportunistic timing. Extending the work of Bebchuk et al. (2010), we explore the effect of overall corporate governance quality on CEO luck. Provided by the Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), our comprehensive governance metrics are much broader than those used in prior studies, encompassing more diverse aspects of corporate governance, such as audit, state laws, boards, ownership, and director education. We show that an improvement in governance quality by one standard deviation diminishes CEO luck by 14.77-21.06%. The governance standards recommended by ISS appear to be effective in deterring the opportunistic timing of option grants.