The Curse of the Were-Rabbit 2005 is the first full-length feature film made by directors nick Park and Steve Box with their amazing plasticine characters Wallace and Gromit.

Although a correlation between them leaving and subsequent bad performance at the firm is suggestive, it does not mean that such directors are always jumping off a sinking ship.

But the researchers believe that outside directors have an easier time of avoiding a blow to their reputations if they leave a firm before bad news breaks, even if a review of history shows they were on the board at the time any wrongdoing occurred.

firms who want to keep their outside directors through tough times may have to create incentives.

If the sky, and the share price is falling, outside directors should be able to give advice based on having weathered their own crises.

Otherwise outside directors will follow the example of Ms. Simmons, once again very popular on campus.

Outside directors are supposed to serve as helpful, yet less biased, advisers on a firm's board.

The most likely reason for departing a board was age, so the researchers concentrated on those "surprise" disappearances by directors under the age of 70.

The researchers from Ohio University used a database that covered more than 10, 000 firms and more than 64, 000 different directors between 1989 and 2004.

Then they simply checked which directors stayed from one proxy statement to the next.