Mutated gene safeguards against heart attacks

Companies with women on their executive and supervisory boards are valued more highly by the stock markets. Investors rate the performance of the few women who climbed to the top of the career ladder in companies without a gender quota as being better than that of their male peers. Economists from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the University of Hong Kong used an unusual method to reach this conclusion. They studied the share price development of companies following the exit of top managers due to death or illness in a sample of around 50 countries. Are companies more successful if they have several women serving on their boards? Or are successful firms more likely to appoint women to the top table? No scientific study has so far been able to determine exactly how the representation of women influences a company's success because few studies have been able to solve the cause and effect conundrum. Daniel Urban from TUM and Thomas Schmid from the University of Hong Kong therefore decided to adopt an analysis method that seems a little unusual at first glance. It involved studying the share price movements of companies following the exit of executive or supervisory board members due to death or illness.