In this paper, I extend the stock-for-debt research by investigating whether stock value is influenced by how a firm changes its leverage ratio in relationship to its industry leverage ratio norm. I find that announcement-period stock returns for firms moving "away from" industry debt-to-equity...

We examine 242 NYSE/AMEX and OTC common stock offerings that reduce bank debt and 254 that retire non-bank debt. We discover that bank debt reductions are associated with negative announcement period stock returns that are more than twice the magnitude of the negative returns found for non-bank...

Prior research of common stock offerings reaches different conclusions concerning the impact of issue costs on stock value. We identify factors that can best explain the different findings - most prominent are the issue costs measure and the listing. We investigate 323 common stock offerings and...