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We test whether managerial preferences explain how firms hedge, using hand‐collected data on derivative portfolios in the oil and gas industry. How firms hedge involves choosing between linear contracts and put options, and deciding whether to finance these hedging positions with cash on hand or by selling call options. The likelihood of being a hedger increases with chief executive officer (CEO) age, and near‐retirement CEOs prefer linear hedging instruments. The predictions of the managerial risk incentives theory of hedging strategy, according to which managers with convex compensation schemes avoid hedging strategies that cap upside potential, find no support in the data.

Using a novel European data set, we investigate the role of controlling shareholders in delisting decisions. Minority shareholders earn lower abnormal returns when the controlling shareholder takes the company private, but this lower premium disappears when we control for the firm's characteristics. After the delisting, firms delisted by their controlling shareholders do not improve their operating performance. These results do not suggest that controlling shareholders expropriate minority investors with minority freeze-outs. Our findings are not due to heterogeneity across controlling shareholders. In fact, when we focus on family controlling shareholders, we find no evidence of performance improvement after the delisting.