In sum, effective CFOs can act as a counteracting power imposing discipline on CEOs through bottom-up monitoring (Landier et al., 2012). In the presence of low CEO-CFO LSM, the CFO tends to play a more effective monitoring role. In such a case, firms will not make a deal unless they are certain about potential value creation and choose to pay targets with cash, resulting in higher announcement returns. In contrast, a high CEO-CFO LSM indicates that the CFO has a strong intention to ingratiate the CEO and will be ineffective in bottom-up monitoring. Thus, firms may acquire targets whose synergistic value may be ambiguous and pay targets with a high percentage of stock, giving rise to lower announcement returns.