Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to test for managerial opportunism, specifically the backdating of executive options, in Australia. Design/methodology/approach – The paper analyses the return behaviour associated with a sample of 161 unscheduled options granted by Australian firms....

This paper tests for managerial opportunism, specifically the backdating of executive options, in a market subject to IFRS accounting requirements. For a sample of 161 unscheduled options granted by Australian firms, we observe positive abnormal returns in the post-grant period. Consistent with...