The investment policy is an important vehicle of growth for a company. Therefore, it should be one of the most important signals for investors on the capital market. We use the statistical analysis of the investors’ reactions to different patterns of investment policy to highlight their preference for an active investment policy and the changes induced by the financial crisis. By a comparative analysis of investors’ preferences with the information on the accounting-based performance recorded simultaneously and in the future economic exercise, we focus on the extent and limits of the investors’ rationality around the financial crisis.

This work expands the literature on a less studied topic, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) turnover in post-communist economies, analyzed during an unstable and ambiguous economic and financial environment. For the period 2005–2010, the results indicate the political inference in CEO turnover decision for the Romanian listed companies. In this period, with great turmoil in the economy determined by the financial crisis of 2008, we also find that CEO gender helps to explain the probability of changing the CEO. Moreover, this paper empirically tests if the financial and corporate governance determinants that are validated in the existing literature work for the Romanian listed companies. We reinforce that CEO turnover decision is negatively related to accounting-based performance. We find evidence of the “voting with their feet” behavior of institutional investors, and of the lack of Board of Directors monitoring. The CEO–Chairman duality and the controlling power of the largest shareholder act as entrenchment mechanisms.

In the recent years, an increasing number of papers deepened cross-disciplinary studies, examining how different cultural values influence financial variables. The main objective of our paper is to test if the dominant world religions (Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Islamic, and Judaic), and, moreover, some Christian denominations (Catholicism, Protestantism and Eastern Orthodox Christianity) are related to some patterns in capital structure. Our paper considers distinctly the category of countries in which Agnostics, Atheists and non-religious people are predominant. The results are promising. Companies located in the states with predominance of Islamic religion have a lower leverage, while the ones from predominantly Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Hindu and Judaic countries, as well as those in mainly Agnostic, Atheist and non-religious ones, are indebted more than those from mainly Protestant countries. The debt maturity seems to be correlated to the dominant religions or denominations, with companies in the predominantly Eastern Orthodox, Buddhist and Agnostic, Atheist and non-religious countries relying more on short term debt, and those in the majority Catholic, Judaic and Hindu countries on long term debt.

The paper investigates the relationship between companies and their investors in the capital market as part of relationship marketing. It focuses on investors’ preference for a certain capital budgeting policy employed by listed companies. By using statistical analysis, we study whether investors’ reactions can be linked to different patterns of capital budgeting decisions. Our database includes a high number of countries, both developed and emerging, which leads us to focus our analysis on the differences that might occur in investors’ preferences due to specific traits of these markets. Additionally, we include a comparison between investors’ preferences and the information given by the accounting-based performance recorded both in the year of the investment policy and in the next fiscal year. Thus, we observe the extent and limits of the investors’ preference for an active capital budgeting decision, as well as the investors’ rationality around financial crisis.

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