From Professor Bainbridge:
The HBR reports:
A year before Bear Stearns failed during the financial crisis, there were signs that the Wall Street firm was in trouble. During July 2007, two of Bear Stearns’ large hedge funds were failing. What was CEO James Cayne doing at the time? That month, he spent ten “working” days either playing golf or the card game bridge. ...Go read the whole thing, it's quite interesting.
Separate tests focusing on operating performance and stock market valuations both suggest that high levels of CEO leisure are associated with underperforming firms. The average return on assets (ROA) is over 100 basis points lower for the CEOs in our sample who were in the top 25% of most-frequent golfers. A similar relation exists between CEO leisure consumption and firm market capitalization, which suggests that shareholder wealth is also negatively affected by the time CEOs spent on the fairways and greens.
