This paper provides an analysis of legal insider trading on the Euronext Amsterdam stock exchange by using data published in the register held by the AFM, the dutch financial markets authority. The sample includes 822 transactions executed by corporate insiders between the beginning of January...

Are CEOs unable to learn? This surprising question deserves to be raised in the light of the declining pattern of cumulative abnormal returns observed in M&A programs. This paper shows that this pattern is the expected ex post empirical evidence for rational risk averse CEOs. Our theoretical...

Knowledge gleaned from previous acquisitions may confer valuation expertise and other benefits. But numerous acquisitions also entail costs, due to problems of incorporating diverse units into an ever larger firm. Such benefits and costs are not directly observable from outside the firm. This...

Acquisitions, mergers, and other business agreements face increasing regulatory scrutiny, even when they involve firms domiciled outside the territory of regulatory authorities. Recent examples include mergers between American firms that were approved by American regulators but blocked by...

Recent empirical papers report a declining trend in the cumulative abnormal return (CAR) of acquirers during an M&A program. Does this necessarily imply that acquiring CEOs are infected by hubris and are not learning from previous mistakes? We first confirm the existence of this declining trend...