We have argued that CEO-CFO LSM is mainly driven by CFOs’ ingratiation of CEOs instead of CEO-CFO social cohesion because of the power asymmetry between CEOs and CFOs. To empirically verify this argument, we conduct a battery of analyses. First, we compare changes in CEOs’ and CFOs’ language style (LS) during their tenure overlap. We find that the change in CEOs’ LS is 2.9 percent whereas the change in CFOs’ LS is 5.9 percent and the difference is statistically significant (t=38, p