Investors respond more positively to CEO appointments when the appointee is Black, not white, according to a recent study.
The study, published in Wiley's Strategic Management Journal, reviewed 5,000 CEO appointments at S&P 1500 companies over 20 years; 57 of these CEOs were Black. Researchers then used the platform Eventus to perform a market analysis, observing each company's average cumulative abnormal return within three days of the appointment announcement.
When the CEO appointed was Black, companies saw a 3.1 percent average increase in cumulative abnormal returns. By comparison, white CEO announcements saw an average dip of .91 percent by the same measure.
Ann Murphy, PhD, associate professor at the Hoboken, N.J.-based Stevens Institute of Technology School of Business and a co-author of the study, told Fortune the Black CEOs they studied were more likely to have advanced degrees and elite university educations.
"By the time a [Black executive] gets to the CEO office, they’ve time after time had to prove themselves. So, when they reach that highest point, they are extraordinary," Dr. Murphy told the publication in a Sept. 21 article.